Reliable Blast Furnace Hearth Management

The “Rihanne” project focusses on a more reliable blast furnace (BF) hearth management in order to improve the productivity, process stability as well as material and energy efficiency. This is enabled by longer periods between the
intermediate hearth repairs, prolonged hearth life time, lower need for extra coke to prevent metal break-out and less deviations from the optimal tapping praxis. Measurements from innovative on-line devices and comprehensive novel models of lining wear, hearth flow, liquid levels and taphole flow will be integrated via Big Data Methodology to yield straight-forward operator guidelines for smooth and reliable BF hearth operation
The proposed work in Rihanne will be carried out by a consortium of 10 partners from steel making companies, research institutes and universities. This guarantees both the quality of the research and the practical implementation in industry. The research institutes and universities will work in close cooperation with the industrial sites for efficient transfer of data and process knowledge and for implementing the developed tools. All tasks are divided between the partners in a way to avoid duplication of work, but to benefit from complementary skills and resources. The developed tools will be implemented at one or several blast furnaces. Application of multiple blast furnaces is required for ensuring that the current state-of-art is utilised and that the methods are generally applicable, but also to compare different technologies to determine the best practice.