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Why Seek Digital Solutions for the Metallurgical Industry?

Optimize energy costs, resource consumption, and emissions footprint in the metallurgical industry with the digital solutions offered by Vetta.

10/31/2023 - By Lis Soares - Head of Energy Efficiency at Vetta

Vetta is part of the SMS group's portfolio of digital solutions and is part of the group's Center of Excellence for Energy and Sustainability Digitalization.

Why pursue digitalization?

What can one expect from energy and sustainability digitalization?

Pursuing digitalization offers a range of significant advantages.

First and foremost, digitalization allows for the precise quantification of real-time data related to energy, raw materials, and carbon emissions, enabling more precise and efficient quantitative analysis. Immediate and measurable cost savings are driven by the optimization of various energy and resource operations, for example:

• Reduction in resource consumption (electricity, natural gas, steel gases, air gases, and other resources).
• Increased generation of valuable by-products (electricity, steam).
• Reduction of unwanted gas burning.
• Virtual elimination of resource leaks and persistent waste.
• Virtual elimination of unplanned contractual penalties.

Furthermore, it provides equally essential qualitative benefits that indirectly drive improvements in various areas of the business, significantly enhancing transparency, governance, and agility in processes. This is because it is possible, for example:

• To obtain real-time measurements of carbon footprints per product.
• To automate various managerial and operational tasks, increasing team productivity and availability.

By adopting digitalization in these areas, it is expected to achieve more effective and sustainable management, greater control over resources, minimization of environmental impacts, and a more agile response to market and regulatory demands.

What items can be optimized? The entire matrix: energy + resources + emissions

When we talk about the SMS solution portfolio, Viridis Energy & Sustainability, we are talking about all energy flows and greenhouse gas emissions, particulates, waste, etc.:

• ENERGY - Electricity, solid fuels, liquid fuels, gaseous fuels, natural gas, and derived gases (blast furnace gas, coking gas, converter gas), steam, coke, coal, charcoal, tar.
• RESOURCES - All productive resources, including raw materials and utilities, for which there are direct or indirect measurements, such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, argon, all types of water, compressed air, lime, flows, acids.
• EMISSIONS - All emissions for which there are direct or indirect measurements, such as CO2 and other greenhouse gases, NOx, SOx, and other pollutants, sludge particles, mud, and waste.

What sets Vetta apart?

The approach and methodology offered by Vetta are different from other existing solutions in the market because we offer fully integrated solutions. These solutions are based on three major pillars:

1. Engineering and Operation - expertise and industrial knowledge of metal industry processes and technologies.
2. Artificial Intelligence - All model development expertise, including machine learning, simulation models, and optimization.
3. Software and Architecture - A team with robust knowledge in the industrial application area, including design thinking and agile processes.

How do the Solutions work?

Our Viridis Platform solutions operate in real-time, using highly sophisticated models that go beyond traditional data collection, monitoring, and tracking. Our solutions go beyond this because they use predictive models, dynamic simulation models based on production plans, stochastic simulations. Additionally, we have optimization models with state-of-the-art technology for autonomous operation, multi-objective optimization, and operational recommendations.

Viridis is a platform with various applications available. Each application has a specific goal to solve a particular energy and sustainability challenge. The applications available on the platform can work independently and can also be integrated. Always focusing on delivering value, the applications already bring numerous benefits when working independently. Want to know more about the Viridis Platform applications? Click here.

How can I get started?

Vetta proposes starting this energy and sustainability digitalization journey with a technical visit and an evaluation of the energy and sustainability aspects of the plant's processes. Next, an analysis is conducted with customer-centered data, with the customer's actual data. With the results, we move on to the design phase of the most appropriate solutions for the situation found and the implementation of digitalization.

Want to know more about the digitalization process? Contact us.

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