Leading equipment and techno-economic indicator levels have been achieved during the blow-in of the brownfield New Number 1 blast furnace at Sanming Steel HQ, which is based in China’s Fujian Province.

To create this modern furnace, CISDI applied tailor-made solutions to the 1,950-cubic-metre vessel. Its thin walls are an important feature.

Operating as the plant’s BF1, it is fitted with CISDI’s advanced top-combustion stoves and efficient, low-nitrogen staggered cyclone ceramic burners.

Its capabilities include one-touch taphole drilling and automatic change of drill rods. A smart hot metal sampling robot and hot metal transportation via railway alignment locomotive greatly reduces labour requirements at the casthouse.

A siphon bottom-filtering slag granulating system is supported with a smart slag-grabbing method and combined truck and train transportation for the granulated slag.

Reaching China’s ultra-low emissions standard was a priority during the furnace’s design. Energy and emission-reducing tech was applied. It includes top gas equalising and relief and recovery, dry-way dust collection, clean gas back-blowing and a blower station power recovery turbine featuring coaxially-driven blower, motor and turbine.

The flying dusts area has been fully enclosed. In addition to a comprehensive dust collection system, the furnace has an enclosed tank car for the transportation of dusts. It features negative pressure suction and discharge plus piping, and a centralised ash bin for dust collecting plant-wide.

All these measures have minimised secondary or flying dusts.

Sanming’s furnace is operating with digital, lean production management. CISDI’s digital project management platform connects all design, procurement and construction data.

The Sanming “new BF 1” in operation