The management of the hearth is crucial for the successful operation of the blast furnace, both to ensure a long campaign and to maintain a high production of hot metal of high quality. In order to take appropriate control actions, it is important to get indications of the state of the blast furnace hearth, since the effects of process changes may be very different for different states of the hearth and of the dead man. If, for instance, the hearth is impermeable a production increase may lead to problems with residual metal and slag. If, on the other hand, there is a bypass channel for the hot metal around the dead man, problems of high erosion rates of the lining may arise.
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