Reheating furnaces and soaking pits are used to heat uniformly to a predetermined temperature slab, bloom, billet, and ingot, which are made at blooming mills, by continuous casting, and in steelmaking plants. Monolithic refractories such as castables and plastics have been adopted for those furnaces as they have become larger, their shapes more complicated, and the operational conditions severer. In recent years, in response to the necessity to reduce Co_2 emission, which is regarded as a source of global warming, further curtailment of fuel consumption by industrial furnaces, the adoption of high efficiency burners, changes in combustion methods, and the relining of furnace walls to increase their insulation capability, have been actively pursued. In the case of reheating furnaces, the necessity of wall insulation has been reemphasized since the 1st oil crisis in the 1970_s, and lining systems with highly insulating ceramic fibers have come to be widely used.
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