A NEW PRACTICAL ENGINEERING APPROACH TO IMPROVING THE SERVICE RELIABILITY OF COPPER STAVES IN BLAST FURNACES

摘要

Copper staves are being used widely as blast furnace body cooling components. Blast furnace production continuity and life-time sustainability are directly related to the durability of the copper staves. Copper staves protect the refractory and furnace shell from the heat load and adverse mechanical effects due to the formation of an accretion layer. Since the stave maintenance and replacement are almost impossible due to staves' hard-to-reach location during the BF is in service, performance reliability of the copper staves have crucial importance in terms of blast furnace productivity and life-time as well. High level productivity and longer blast furnace service lifetime could be achieved by a trouble free copper stave cooling system. In this study, root causes of the copper stave failures are discussed, a new approach for the risk of premature wear is presented, and binary logistic regression analyses of the blast furnace operation and two design parameters are performed.