Study On Application And Effect Of Copper Cooling Stave In The Furnace Operation For The BF In Panzhihua Iron And Steel Works

With developments in the blast furnace ironmaking process, A long campaign life of the area of high thermal load (particularly in the bosh, belly,lower shaft areas) is very essential for the long campaign life of the blast furnace. The mechanisms of damaging the staves are mainly the washing of the liquid slag, oxidation and chemical erosion. Classically, staves are made from nodular cast iron. however, the staves are subjected to heavy stresses caused by high heat loads, which can limit the length of a furnace campaign. So the areas remained the weak point of the blast furnace.The copper cooling stave technology is one of the products of such efforts. A stave is a cooling device having one or more internal water channel, and is installed in numbers on the inner surface of a blast furnace to protect its steel shell and maintain the inner profile. The copper cooling staves have come to be used for more and more blast furnace since 1979 (particularly since 1988). In 1993, copper staves were introduced for the first time in Germany at the No.2 blast furnace of Thyssen Krupp at Schwelgern and the B blast furnace at Salzgitter. The viability of manufacturing them of copper, which is excellent in heat conductivity was confirmed.This paper introduces the application of copper stave used in blast furnaces both home and abroad. By compassion of cast iron cooling stave and copper cooling stave, the advantage and disadvantage of adopting copper cooling stave in BF are discussed. some problems were probed, such as the maximum thermal load born by copper cooling stave system, the place installing copper cooling stave and lining structure of copper cooling stave. Practice shows that copper stave can make skull stable and reform rapidly at the wall of bosh,belly and the lower stack of BF, the stave and the steel shell will be protected,and the loss of heat will be relieved and campaign life of BF will be prolonged to 15-20 years after the copper stave was adopted. Hot test of copper cooling stave for blast furnace in Panzhihua Iron and Steel Works was introduced in this paper. The temperature distribution of hot side of the stave under different working condition which was similar to the blast furnace was researched. What's more, the heat flux through the thickness direction of the copper cooling stave was deeply analyzed.The application of copper stave used in the No.1 blast furnaces in Panzhihua Iron and Steel Works. it is pointed that the rational and stable cooling temperature is the key factor to ensure the life of copper cooling stave. The variation of the thermal load of the copper cooling stave is useful for timely analyzing the fluctuation and variation of operative blast furnace profile and can assist the operator in regulating the furnace operation and keeping the furnace in stable running.In view of the above, The copper cooling staves proved to be so successful that today the use of copper staves in the areas of high thermal load is state-of-the-art and large-capacity blast furnace technology.