OPTIMAL OPERATING-CONDITIONS FOR THE PRIMARY END OF AN INTEGRATED STEEL PLANT - GENETIC ADAPTIVE SEARCH AND CLASSICAL TECHNIQUES

The optimal operating conditions for the primary end of an integrated steel plant, which essentially comprises of sintering plant, pelletizi ng plant, blast furnaces, oxygen steelmaking converters and electric a re furnace, are found through a modern technique of optimization, name ly, genetic adaptive search (GAS), and also through classical techniqu es of simplex search with simulated annealing (ASM) and sequential qua dratic programming (SOP). A comparison of these techniques shows that GAS outperforms both the classical methods and obtains the lowest cost solution. Based on this study, it is recommended that GAS be used, in preference to other methods, in complex steel plant optimization prob lems.