Baowu Group Zhanjiang’s intelligent hot metal locomotive

—— Achieving all-weather, autonomous transport of hot metal

A hot metal locomotive, a world first for the steel sector, has been in a test-run at Baowu Group Zhanjiang since July.

It will be used to transport hot metal from the ironmaking plant to the steelmaking plant.

The route between these two closely-linked and important logistics and production systems, is fraught with difficulty.

Conventionally, the complicated scheduling of locomotives and all procedures - coupling, parking, aligning, route-planning and ladle matching - have to be done manually and are fraught with problems and hazards.

CISDI’s solution to this problematic process is an intelligent, unmanned hot metal transport system.

Featuring a self-learning, self-adapting, high-precision control model, the locomotive has all-weather environmental perception and can identify obstacles in its path and act accordingly.

The hook between locomotive and torpedo ladle car connects and releases automatically and the ladle car is positioned accurately, even in the most severe conditions.

The equipment guarantee system, intelligent battery management system, digital twin, big data analysis platform and artificial intelligence expertise have been integrated into this locomotive and its scheduling.

The test run has shown very positive results:

●     The torpedo ladle car’s turnover rate has been increased from 3.9 to 4.2

●     The locomotive or ladle car’s availability has increased by 12.5 per cent

●     Transport efficiency has seen a rise of 10 per cent

●     Labour requirements have been cut by 80 per cent

CISDI’s autonomous locomotive, loaded with hot metal, traverses the railway crossing from ironmaking plant to steelmaking plant at Baowu Group’s Zhanjiang Steel