The application of drone technology is helping ArcelorMittal to accelerate its transformation and innovate in industrial inspection and maintenance processes.
ArcelorMittal is a global industrial giant. Its impact in the steel industry can therefore be expressed in huge figures. The company has steel plants in 16 countries worldwide, customers in 160 countries and employs 168,000 people. Its teams work around the clock to deliver the steel on which modern society is built. For example, ArcelorMittal shipped 69 million tonnes of steel in the form of coils to every corner of the world.
Extreme conditions in steel plants
By its very nature, the steel industry is an activity with several risks. Workers work daily with huge, heavy, noisy, and incredibly hot machines. Steel reaches temperatures of up to 1600 degrees Celsius during the manufacturing process, and workers are surrounded by liquid steel, giant buildings, and many moving vehicles. Today, workforce health and safety is clearly the most important priority at ArcelorMittal and in the steel industry in general. According to the worldwide statistics of the World Steel Association, the number of injuries per million hours worked decreased from 4.55 in 2006 to 0.97 in 2017: a drop of 78.67%.
In addition, the steel industry knows that it is also a major source of CO2 emissions, as it needs a lot of combustible raw materials such as coal to produce steel. According to the World Steel Association, steel accounts for seven to nine per cent of all direct fossil fuel emissions.
All these ingredients combine to make a steel plant an extraordinary workplace that sometimes resembles what it would be like to work on Mars. An industrial site of this size and nature keeps workers humble in the face of such a hostile environment.
The perfect candidate for a fourth industrial revolution
One thing is certain: steel is an essential material that underpins modern society and daily life. ArcelorMittal is looking for ways to make its plants safer, cleaner, greener, and smarter. Not only to protect its workers, but also to reduce its carbon footprint and increase the efficiency of its production sites.
ArcelorMittal recognises that new technologies are key to transforming its production sites and has identified certain solutions that can meet their needs. Indeed, the company has started to deploy drones at their production sites to perform 3D scans and facilitate critical industrial inspections, maintenance, and operational safety tasks.
Flying in Fos sur Mer
ArcelorMittal has a plant in Fos sur Mer, near the port of Marseille and gateway to the Mediterranean in southern Frans. It is – with a production capacity of four million tonnes of steel per year – a key location in Europe. The plant is as big as a city and employs around 4,000 workers (ArcelorMittal and third parties).
One of these workers is Denis Emeric, head of technical maintenance in Fos sur Mer. He leads a team of 350 workers who are responsible for maintaining the complex infrastructure and carrying out inspections.
Denis is aware of how much time his teams need to carry out their inspection and maintenance tasks. This involves inspecting chimneys, pipes and roof structures at a height higher than that of some of the tallest buildings in France – Notre Dame would even fit inside the steelworks. Not to mention the steamy heat that can make this task even more complicated.
Normally, these routine tasks are carried out by erecting heavy scaffolding or using rope access when scaffolding is not possible. Setting up scaffolding and shutting down machinery so technicians can climb on it is not only tedious, but also expensive and potentially dangerous. That is why Denis Emeric believes he has found the ideal solution to streamline this routine task in Fos sur Mer: inspection drones.
Drones allow them to gather sharp visual data on critical assets and machines while keeping their feet safely on the ground.
Decades of experience with aerial camera technology
“We have a long history of using remote-controlled aircraft, and we understood very early the benefits of using aerial camera technology”, says Ronald Kefferstein, head of the maintenance team, with 30 years’ experience at ArcelorMittal.
“We are even proud to be called true pioneers of the industry in France by the French media since we introduced camera-linked hot air balloons in 2004 and started using remote-controlled helicopters with cameras in 2010. Gradually, we moved to drone technology, as it was readily available, and it made perfect sense to us.”
Through their early adoption, the ArcelorMittal Fos sur Mer plant has gained significant experience in using aerial camera technology for inspections over the past decades and is now a key contributor to ArcelorMittal’s Drone Cell Division worldwide.
All ArcelorMittal plants, including 30 industrial sites across Europe, Africa, America, Asia and Australia, host quarterly digital meetings where they share best practices and push for smarter integration of drones.
ArcelorMittal’s drone programme
Today, the drone team at ArcelorMittal Fos sur Mer is led by Yassine Ben Kacem, who supervises six pilots. There is never a dull moment at the steelworks, and his team’s expertise is sought after and praised daily. Yassine Ben Kacem’s team regularly carries out various missions, ranging from inspection, maintenance, thermal and stock surveys and much more.
The drone of their choice
Yassine Ben Kacem’s fleet has evolved over the years, but the drone of choice today is DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise Advanced.
The drone team uses a wide variety of drones, including heavy-duty Matrice series platforms, but the Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced has quickly carved out its own place in ArcelorMittal’s fleet.
“We need to be able to plan and execute our missions within minutes. The Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced with its RTK capabilities that can be deployed in the air within minutes is crucial for us”, says Yassine Ben Kacem.
Yassine has found the M2EA to be ideal for fast, accurate inspections of hard-to-reach installations due to its smaller size. For larger scale inspections, such as a pipeline length of hundreds of metres, he prefers his M210 with Z30, but for everything else, the M2EA is ideal.
One of the most relevant features for their missions, along with the powerful thermal camera for a drone of this size, is the RTK module. This allows them to map their inventory very accurately, while reducing the need to use geometers that take much longer to get the job done.
“We find the Waypoint feature very useful as it allows us to capture a flight and mission path that can be repeatedly re-used for future missions. This allows the drone’s flight path to be perfectly replicated and the data to be accurately compared.”
The drone applications at ArcelorMittal Fos sur Mer inspections
Drones are now used for all inspections tasks at height, such as roofs, conveyor belts or other areas that are difficult to access. Now, ArcelorMittal’s trained technicians only need to climb up scaffolding after a drone inspection has identified areas that require repairs.
Measuring
Mapping and measuring raw material stocks is a time-consuming routine task that requires precision. Thanks to drones, ArcelorMittal can perform these tasks quickly and with very high precision.
“Using drones to measure and control stockpiles has saved us an enormous amount of time”, says Ronald Kefferstein.
“Before we used drones, we had to send surveyors, such as geometers, around and between all these stocks of raw materials. Today, with the use of photogrammetry enabled by drones, we can do this tedious work in an hour, while collecting accurate data, and while keeping our workers safe.”
Thermal monitoring
The DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced’s high-precision thermal camera allows ArcelorMittal to monitor the heat and temperature of their infrastructure, such as their plant’s chimneys, and equipment.
“The ability to have a live thermal image is critical on our sites. The heat coming out of a chimney is invisible and only a thermal camera can help us get a clear picture of what is going on”, says Ronald Kefferstein.
Monitoring the environment
The ArcelorMittal site in Fos sur Mer is surrounded by a nature reserve covering hundreds of acres. It consists of freshwater and saltwater coastal marshes. This is a unique area in France that is home to a wide variety of rare animal and plant species.
In fact, the ArcelorMittal site lies at the gateway to the French Camargue landscape, home to many wild horses and bulls as well as rice fields that make it a very special and exotic region of France.
ArcelorMittal has entrusted the conversation and monitoring of this unique nature reserve to ECOMED (Ecology and Mediation), an ecological engineering consultancy providing expertise and advice on land and natural environment development. ECOMED works with planners, developers, industrialists, and public organisations with expertise in the Mediterranean region. Their core expertise is in consulting for long-term ecological monitoring, fauna, and flora surveys, planning and ecological management.
Marie Pisson, project manager at ECOMED and responsible for monitoring the ArcelorMittal Nature Reserve, explains how ArcelorMittal’s drone team provides its expertise and support with its pilots and drones equipped with a multispectral camera. They collect valuable multispectral image data from the air and make analyses to monitor the long-term preservation of this nature reserve. Thanks to these multispectral images, they accurately map the reserve, gain insight into its evolution, and detect any changes that would have a negative impact on the environment, such as the invasion of new botanical species.
The basic ingredients for setting up an industrial drone team
According to Ronald Kefferstein, there are a few key points for industrial facilities to consider when integrating and implementing drones at work.
- Motivated staff, embracing new technology with passion
- A team of professionally trained pilots
- A clear pattern of drone use according to local regulations
Return on investment
Across the board, drones have led to major cost savings at ArcelorMittal. Yassine estimates that their investment in drones has led to savings of between € 100,000 and € 200,000 per year. A large part of this is due to the reduction of expensive outsourcing interventions by external companies dealing with scaffolding, rope climbers or cradles. The time saved is incredible, especially for mapping and quick inspections. But the biggest benefit is something that is harder to express in euros: safety. The number of working hours at height or contact with dangerous machinery is greatly reduced, and many dangerous inspection tasks are carried out by drones.
Drones in an innovative steel industry
In recent years, many ArcelorMittal plants have used drones in a similar capacity to the Fos sur Mer site. When the potential of this technology was revealed, a community and a knowledge base formed. Now, a formal network group on drones has been established and is leading efforts to maximize the use of this innovative technology to make the steel industry safer, more efficient, and more cost-effective.
Drone technology has taken off, including at ArcelorMittal, where it has completely changed the approach to certain technical challenges.
Together with other digitalization techniques and new ways of making steel using less energy for a better impact on the environment, there is no doubt that drones play a vital role in making the steel industry smarter, cleaner, and safer.
The list of ways ArcelorMittal currently uses drones is extensive: performing inspections, surveying and measuring, counting inventory, checking utilities and much more. Drones can safely go where humans cannot, enhancing safety. They can help detect defects or weak spots in equipment, preventing costly repairs. And drones can perform some tasks in record time, saving not only valuable time, but also effort and money.
“The steel industry is evolving rapidly to improve all processes and reduce the risk to workers and the impact on the environment”, said Denis Emeric. “ArcelorMittal is committed to using new technologies and drones have the potential to profoundly transform our industry and the way we do business.”
