The recent financial crisis and the increasing competition among steelmaking companies have alerted steel producers to be constantly looking for opportunities to reduce their process costs and improve their equipment performance and availability. Thus, special attention has been given to the refractory lining material, as unexpected failures may halt steel production process and affect plant productivity1'. Besides that, refractory producers have also increased their efforts to improve the quality of products due to the increasing trend of performance-based agreements between them and the end users2,3). In other words, steelmakers pay for lining materials which ensure the lowest number of maintenance stops and, consequently, the highest levels of productivity.
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