The wish to increase the production capacity of the Dunkirk plant has led the steel shop to modify the refractories in order to respond better to these new conditions. The first target is to produce 6.7 Mt of hot metal per year on the three blast furnaces of Dunkirk, and the second, after the relining of blast furnace No. 3 planned in 2004, to produce 6.9 Mt of hot metal, in order to cast more slabs (6.7 Mt of steel). One of the main challenges is to increase the capacity of the steel ladles from 240 to 270 t and, at the same time, to improve reliability. For all these reasons, work for the design of new ladles is really complex and different trials are on the way on wall structure, monolithic bottoms, lip ring, and repairs.
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