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BLAST FURNACE PROCESS INTRODUCTION: Blast furnace process is one of the most primitive and highly established process.

Blast furnace process has been proved to be the best route ever found. This is because of not only it is a high productivity process it is also a high heat utilizing process. The high heat utilization of 85% to 90% is possible in this process sbecause of efficient counter current heat exchange phenomenon. RAW MATERIALS: Different types of raw materials are used in this process. Raw materials control is the most important thing for high productivity and low fuel rate. This raw materials used are: 1) Iron ore Iron bearing hematitie type ore which is the main contributor of metallic iron. This contains around 64% Fe. 2) 2) Coke This material is the one which produces hieat, gas and also gives sufficient mechanical strength to the materials inside the furnace. The imported Chinese coke contains around 85% fixed carbon and around 12% Ash. Main job of a blast furnace operator is to take all pains to reduce this consumption. 3) Limestone This is a flux material with CaO around 50% which is used to dilute the gangue materials inside the furnace to form as fluid slag. 4) Quartz This is 99% SIO2 material which is used to maintain the slag basicity and its volume. 5) Dunite This contains MgO of 38% and SiO2 of 45%. This is added to maintain MgO in slag for getting fluidity and to reduce the liquidus temperature. 6) Sinter and Pellets - These are the materials which are produced by using the finer particles of iron ore, coke, limestone etc. These materials contain Fe and are used upto 70-80% in place of iron ore. Some other additives are also used such as EOF slag, mill scale, Mn ore, Ti ferro ore, Nut coke etc. depending upon the furnace condition and need PROFILE: Basic profile of the blast furnace is having the following parts : 1) Throat This is the part whrer the raw materials charged are hitting and falling insided the furnace. This is gaureded with armours. 2) Stack This part starts below throat and extends outwards from throat. This is designed like wise to accommodate the thermal and volumetric expansions. 3) Belly This is the part where diameter is maximum and it is designed because melting and fusing starts here. 4) Bosh This part starts below downwards upto hearth top. In this prtion liquid metal and slag drips down tho hearh.

5) Hearth This cylindrical part collects the metal and slag. Periodical tapping is done to drain the metal and slag. BASIC PROCESS : As told earlier the process works by counter current heat exchange between up thrust of hot gases and down coming solid/liquid materials. Cold air volume of 70000 Nm3/hr and pressure of 2.10 Kg/cm2 which is passes through the hot stoves to get temperature of around 1050 deg. C is blown inside the bottom of the furnace through equidistant openings called tuyeres. Hot air reacts with the carbon of coke present inside the furnace to produce CO. Coke burns in front of the tuyeres to provide cavities. The empty space created induces the burden to drop down and coke is burnt by hot air. This is a continous process and the productivity of the blast furnace depends upon the coke burning rate. The CO produced in fornt of tuyeres reacts with the Fe bearing materials indirectly from the lower zone to upper zone. Depending upon the temperature and efficiency of the gas, Fe2O3 is reduced indirectly to Fe. Fluxes are made to react with carbon to form oxides, which removes the suphur from metal. AUXILIRIES OF BLAST FURNACE Blast furnace contains several auxiliary sections which are very much essential for the production of hot metal. They are given below : 1) FURNACE TOP : Furnace top contains a receiving hopper where the raw materials are charged from the skip. Below that a upper material gate (UMG) is available which protect the upper seal valve (USV) which is below to the upper material gate. As soon as upper seal valve gets open, upper material gate get open and discharge the material into the burden tank. So that there is no contact between USV and material as UMG is above the USV. Below the burden tank, lower material gate (LMG) and lower seal valve (LSV) is there to feed the material in to the furnace from burden tank. For opening of UMG and USV, one relief line is there which is useful to relieve the pressure and in the burden tank. So that pressure will be equal to atmosphere pressure and there will not be any problem for opeing of UMG and USV. There is one equalizing line which is required to pressurize the burden tank for the opeining of LMG and LSV. Pressurizing to be done till burden tank pressure should be equal to furnace pressure. There are two bleeder valves which are present in the highest elevation of the furnace top which bleeds out the gas in case of shutdowns or in case of emergencies. 2) STOCK HOUSE : This section contains 10 concrete bunkers for the storage of iron ore, sinter, pellets, coke and 4 types of additives. There are vibro feeders which descharges the material to the vibrating screens where fines are separated. The bulk materials are collected in the weigh hoppers. Through PLC, required set weights of different materials are given at which the feeder stops. The raw materials from weigh hoppers are charged to teh skip by means of converyors. There are 2 skips in both the sides which

convey the materials to the furnace top. For the additives, no screening arrangement is given because of smaller usages. Coke hoppers = 240 m3 = 2 nos.

Iron ore hoppers = 110 m3 = 4 nos. Additive hoppers = 100 m3 = 2 nos. Additive hoppers = 60 m3 = 2 nos. 3) STOVES : There are there internal combustion type stoves which are used to preheat the cold blast. Stoves use cleaned BF gas as fuel. The two combustion blowers provide air required for heating. The heated stove achieves dome temperature of around 1200 deg. C and base temperature of 375 deg. C. Cold blast is allowed to pass through the hot stove and resultant hot blast is taken to the furnace bustle pipe. Cold blast mixer line is present to mix cold blast to the hot blast partially tomaintain the blast temperature. When one stove is in combustion the stame stove cannot be taken into blast. Combustion air preheater is provided which takes the heat of flue gas and heats the cold combusiotn air to the temperature of about 180 deg. C. 4) GAS CLEANING PLANT : Capacity : 108000 Nm3/hr. Blast furnace gas which is produced is diverted to dust catcher where directional change of gas flow makes the dust to fall down. Then the gas is sent to quencher, two venturies and a cyclonic separator after which the gas gets cleaned of dust and moisture. The venturies also provide the control for furnace top pressure. Gas lines are having drip pots where water if present will drop out. The cleaned gas is sent to gas holder where it can store upto 20000 Nm3. Gas is given to stoves, boilers, sinter plant and BRM reheating furnace. Excess gas if available is flared out and is fired.

5) CAST HOUSE; Cast house contains runner in which metal flows to the ladles and slag flows to the slag granulation system. LRS cranes lifts the ladles and sends to SMS via ladle cars. Slag is passes to the SGP runners where high pressure water is jetted on the slag which granulates the slag. The granulate slag is sent to the SGP tanks from which it is dispatched to the cement plants. For Opening of tap hole, pneumatic/hydraulic type of drilling machine is available. For closing the tap hole a mud gun is there which uses anhydrous clay. 6) PIG CASTING MACHINE: Capacity : 108 MT/Hr.

Excess metal, which is not taken by SMS, is poured in PCM. It contains two chains where pig moulds are placed in cyclic fashion. The chain can be rotated continuously. Hot metal from ladle is poured in the PCM runner and is poured on the pig moulds. Water is used to cool the moulds and the solid pig iron is collected in the pig wagons. A magnetic crane is there which unloads the pig iron from wagon and dispatches to SMS, who uses it as scrap. Pig moulds are coated with lime which disallows the pig iron to stick in the moulds. This is the bried outline of Blast furnace process. There are several in depth technological complexities which can be learnt while in operations. 7) PRODUCT (HOT METAL) CHEMISTRY : C = 4.0 4.3 % Si = 0.4 0.8 % S = 0.04 0.008 % P = 0.12 0.15 % Mn = 0.1 0.3 %

8) SLAG CHEMISTRY : SiO2 = 32 33 % CaO = 33 34 % MgO = 8 9 % Al2O3= 19 21 % FeO = 0.5 0.7 % Basicity = 1.0 1.05

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