Blast Furnace Banking and Blowdown: A Theoretical and Practical Approach to Preparing for an Extended Outage and Start-Up

AISTech-2015 Conference Proceedings, 2015, Volume I. — p. 435-444. The main question prior to an extended blast furnace outage is: should the furnace be banked or blown down? This is a major decision and depends chiefly upon the anticipated length of the outage, but many more choices must also be made. Presented here are banking and blowdown options for various lengths and types of outages as well as exploration into of the array of operational changes that must be considered leading up to each outage: banking burden architecture, pre-outage casting practices, the role of scrap in an outage burden, the number of tuyeres open at start-up, etc. The information and insight contained in this paper, including a detailed positive example of two-week furnace banking and start-up, will attempt to guide the blast furnace operator through these important decisions and provide the tools needed to achieve a successful extended blast furnace outage.