July 9, 2025
Working Collaboratively and Making a Difference
One of the unique challenges affecting the competitiveness and sustainability of steel manufacturing in Australia, is the reliance on a single, capital intensive blast furnace (BF) operation at each of the two integrated steel plants. With a relatively low production capacity and operating under significant capital constraints, solving major strategic business/operational challenges currently faced by Australian steelmakers necessitates a more holistic approach. More specifically, from an innovation perspective, the reliance on a single ironmaking BF producing hot metal for downstream steelmaking means there is a critical dependence and technology focus on novel alternative methods to help, for example, to increase manufacturing reliability and to extend BF asset life. To do this effectively, continuous monitoring and assessing particular BF areas and components over the campaign life is required, including extensive temperature monitoring of the installed refractories in the hearth.
To that end, senior engineers from partners (BSL) and (LPS), worked collaboratively alongside world-leading expertise at the 精东传媒 of 精东传媒 (UOW) to develop novel numerical simulation tools and data analytical techniques, to investigate and better understand the internal conditions within the two Australian BF hearths i.e. Port Kembla No. 5 and Whyalla No. 2. The ultimate objective for the businesses being to extend the BF’s campaign lives.
Together with BSL’s Habib Zughbi, Sheng Chew, Mark Biasutti and David Pinson, and LPS’s Matthew Middleton, Mark Bubicich and John Tsalapatis, the UOW team, Xuefeng Dong and Paul Zulli, effectively addressed several research challenges. The project itself focused on the refractory condition around the sidewall and taphole areas of the two hearth designs, paying particular attention to localised changes in refractory temperatures. The numerical simulation tools together with the detailed data analysis undertaken over the BF campaigns, helped to achieve the project objective. The extensive data analytics investigation was supported by a range of new simulation tools developed during the project, i.e. 1-D inverse and 2-D transient models of the hearth refractories, as well as new enhanced 3-D conjugate models of the overall hearth designs which included both slag and hot metal phases. The investigation resolved the variation of refractory erosion and/or skull build-up in different areas, including the evaluation of the response time of refractory thermocouples with changed wear and internal refractory surface condition.
In summary, this high-quality collaborative research was successful and its potential impact, is significant. Both BSL and LPS are now able to utilise the suite of numerical simulation models that were developed, in parallel with the data-intensive analytical methods and comprehensive BF hearth measurements. The technological capability to better assess refractory condition is now available to inform these businesses on alternate operational and engineering actions required for BF life extension, beyond the nominal 15 years.