8th International Congress on Science and Technology of Ironmaking - ICSTI 2018

Tuyere is the equipment which is supposed to sustain one of the most adverse conditions inside the Blast Furnace. Reliability of Tuyere is very important for trouble free safe operation of Blast furnace. Failure of tuyere increases cost of operation in terms of increased fuel rate and production loss as well as create hazard for the process and human. In front of the tuyere almost 2200 – 2300 degree centigrade temperature persists and at the same time tuyere is also subjected to mechanical abrasion from the descending materials. Till now there is no material developed for tuyere which can sustain such adverse conditions. Copper is used to exploit its high conductivity to sustain extreme temperature but it doesn’t have abrasion resistance. Thus in almost in all Blast Furnaces of the world, different protective layers have been applied to improve the abrasion resistance but have achieve very limited success. ‘I’ Blast furnace was also struggling to achieve high tuyere life. Untimely, sudden and frequent failure of Tuyeres was posing serious threat in achieving stable and safe Blast Furnace operation. It was not only causing high copper loss, at the same time it was responsible for other associated problems like high fuel rate, loss of production etc. Apart from predictive modeling to avoid failure at odd hours, other steps were also taken like indigenous development of coating for top surface, measures to reduce heat loss from the inner surface, change in internal and external cooling circuit of tuyere and measures to prolong life even after burning of the tuyere. This paper deals with all scientific and practical measures taken ‘I’ Blast furnace which aided to achieve a standard tuyere life.