The study of heat-mass transfer characteristics and multi-objective optimization on electric arc furnace

•A transient electric arc furnace model is established to analyze heat-mass transfer characteristics.•The mathematical model is validated by comparing with experiments.•The influence of typical operating parameters on brown corundum smelting process are investigated.•A set of indicators are proposed to comprehensively evaluate the EAF performance.•BP neural network predicting model and multi-objective genetic optimization on EAF are carried out.•A set of optimization operating parameters about EAF is put forward.