POSCO revamps productivity through AI steel mill

A POSCO employee looks into a machine in this promotional image. / Courtesy of POSCO

Steel giant to build anode material factory for lithium batteries

By Nam Hyun-woo

POSCO is improving its productivity by blending the internet of things (IoT), big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into its steelmaking process, as well as spurring its non-steel businesses in materials for rechargeable batteries.

According to the company, it has been using its second blast furnace in Pohang Steel Mill as a test bed for its PosFrame smart factory platform.

POSCO developed PosFrame in 2016 which allows its factories to learn automatic control operations for furnaces, which had been controlled manually.

Before PosFrame, workers manually measured furnace conditions through sampling coal and iron ore, but the new process gathers data for AI to analyze.

The system also automates monitoring of molten iron temperatures and the status of combustion in the furnace.

In the past, POSCO workers had to measure molten iron temperatures by taking photos every two hours, to keep an optimal temperature of 1,500 degrees Celsius. Now an AI system handles the process, even predicting the temperature for an hour later.

After adopting the system, the yield of Pohang's second furnace in 2017 improved by 5 percent, while cutting fuel expenses by 4 percent, the company said.

Earlier this year, the company signed a deal with GE to combine PosFrame and GE's Asset Performance Management (APM) smart factory system to develop and commercialize PosFrame+, a hybrid Smart Factory platform optimized for steel facilities. Currently, POSCO is testing APM at its Pohang Steel Mill.

As well as moving to automate its steelmaking process, the company is bolstering its businesses for rechargeable battery materials.

POSCO said Tuesday it has signed a deal with Gwangyang Bay Area Free Economic Zone Authority in South Jeolla Province, over purchasing 165,300 square meters of land in the area to build an anode material factory.

The company said the factory, expected to be completed next year, will be capable of producing 6,000 tons of anode materials per year, which will be expanded to 50,000 tons by 2022, raising POSCO's anode material capacity to 62,000 tons annually.

POSCO expects to see an extra 2 trillion won in annual revenue after 2022, as well as creating 1,000 jobs.