Distributed Temperature Sensing in the Spray-Cooled Shell of a 150-Ton DC Electric Arc Furnace Using Brillouin Optical Fiber Technology

作者：Farhan Mumtaz, Yeshwanth Reddy Mekala, Koustav Dey, Rony Kumer Saha, Ogbole Collins Inalegwu, Manoj Kumar Pullagura, Bohong Zhang, Muhammad Roman, Nicholas Dionise, Zane Voss, Jeffrey D. Smith, Ronald J. O’Malley, Rex E. Gerald, Jie Huang · 发表于：IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1109/tim.2026.3664551 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Advanced Fiber Optic Sensors、Mechanical and Optical Resonators、Thermography and Photoacoustic Techniques

This paper presents the deployment and validation of a Brillouin - distributed temperature sensing (DTS) system for real-time thermal monitoring of the spray-cooled upper shell of a 150-ton direct current Electric Arc Furnace (DC EAF) at Big River Steel Plant, Osceola, AR, USA. A four-channel Brillouin DTS system from OZ Optics was employed, with one active channel instrumented using an in-house-fabricated Brillouin scattering-depressed single-mode optical fiber (SMF28e+). The 60 m optical fiber sensor was fabricated, with 20 m allocated for thermal measurement and 40 m used as lead-in fiber to isolate the interrogator from the furnace environment. The fiber was nested in stainless steel (SS) tubing and bonded to the hot-face surface of the shell using thermally conductive epoxy. The system captured transient thermal events including burner activation and process-induced heating over multiple furnace cycles. DTS-acquired data were validated against resistance temperature detector (RTD) measurements, confirming consistent thermal trends and system accuracy. Prior to the industrial deployment, several mock-up tests were conducted. Laboratory calibration demonstrated a linear Brillouin frequency shift with temperature, with a sensitivity of approximately 1.19 °C/MHz up to 515 °C and R2= 0.9988. Additional mock-up trials confirmed spatial resolution between 0.5 m and 1 m, with transmission and reflection spectra showing hotspot detection over sensing lengths up to 130 m. An avera...