LORD Corporation’s Balancing Technology Provides Significant Savings to U.S. Steel

Customer
Fairfield, Alabama operation of U.S. Steel – the country’s largest integrated steelmaker.

Challenge
U.S. Steel experience vibration of the basic oxygen furnace, or Q-BOP, induced draft (ID) fans –responsible for pulling the air, gases and materials off the basic oxygen furnace. U.S. Steel was forced to respond to the scenario by cleaning and manually balancing the fans at least every three months. It typically took between three and five balance attempts to perform a successful manual balance on the fan, which often resulted in a violation of the time recommended between starts on the motor, creating high potential for motor failure.

Solution
Three LORD balancing systems were installed with the purpose of continuously monitoring fan vibration levels and phase angle, as well as automatically correct unbalanced conditions. This is done while the fans are running at operating speed, eliminating costly down time associated with manual balancing.

Results
Since installation of the three balancers, U.S. Steel averages one, scheduled maintenance shutdown and one, interim cleaning per year. Since the typical shutdown lasts between eight and 12 hours, the savings are significant. But beyond saved revenue and time from reduced shutdowns, the online balancing technology continuously maintains the balance level of the fans below 0.8 mils, as compared to the previous 1.0 mils low-level field balance. Additionally, the motor and bearing life has been increased, resulting in fewer motor rebuilds as approximately $200,000 each.