Increasing blast furnace productivity - is there a universal solution for all blast furnaces?

摘要

In the past few years there has been a major effort in the integrated plants in the U.S. to increase blast furnace procuctivity. Record production levels have been reported by AK Steel using direct reduced/hot briquetted iron (DRI/HBI) and high levels of natural gas (NG)- oxygen injection at their Middletown blast furnace (1). Similarly, US Steel - Gary No.13 reported high productivity levels with PCI and oxygen enrichment (2). The hot metal production of a blast furnace is normalized with respect to some key furnace dimension to provide a consistent basis to compare the smelting intensity (productivity) of different furnaces. Modern blast furnace lines have become very similar, so that any one of two different ways described below provides a consistent index for comparison - tHM/day/m~WV or tHM/day/m~2 of hearth area. Aproductivity of 6 NTHM/day/100ft~3WV was the norm in the past, but today levels higher than 11 NTHM/day/100 ft~3WV have been reached on a sustained basis.