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Posco Restarts No. 4 Blast Furnace at Gwangyang

07/29/2009 - Posco celebrates the restart of the refurbished 5500-cubic-meter No. 4 Furnace at its Gwangyang Plant, which is to produce some 14,000 tonnes of steel per day, making it the world’s largest blast furnace in terms of daily production.

Posco has become the world’s first steel manufacturer capable of producing five million tonnes of steel per year from a single blast furnace for the first time since the operation of its first blast furnace 36 years ago.
 
The company recently (July 21) re-opened its refurbished 5500-cubic-meter No. 4 Furnace at its Gwangyang Plant, complete with a blowing-in ceremony for rekindling the renovated furnace. The restated furnace is to produce some 14,000 tonnes of steel per day, earning it the distinction of being the world’s largest blast furnace in terms of daily production.

Since it first began operations on September 25, 1992, Gwangyang Plant’s No. 4 Furnace has produced a total of 51.94 million tonnes of molten iron over a period of 16 years and 5 months. Shut down on February 18 for a five-month renovation, the No. 4 furnace has been transformed into Korea’s largest furnace, 900 cubic meters larger than the Gwangyang Plant’s 4600-m3 No. 3 Furnace. The refurbished No. 4 Furnace is to produce 5 million tonnes annually, a production volume that is equivalent to the amount of steel consumed by the Korean automakers in a single year.

Only four other blast furnaces have volumes exceeding 5000 cubic meters. These four blast furnaces are operated by Nippon Steel’s Oita Plant (5775 m3), Severstal’s Cherepovets Plant in Russia (5580 m3), Nippon Steel’s Kimitsu Plant (5555 m3), and the TKS Schwelgern Plant in Germany (5513 m3). Of the world’s largest blast furnaces, Posco’s No. 4 Blast Furnace is the largest in terms of production capacity, with a daily production volume of more than 14,000 tonnes of iron.

In terms of furnace productivity per volume of blast furnace, Gwangyang Works recorded an average of 2.29 tonnes/day/m3 and 2.68 tonnes/day/m3 for the Gwangyang No. 3 Furnace. The No. 3 Furnace set a new world record last year with 14,809 tonnes of average daily production.

“It has been less than 40 years since the first furnace began operating in Korea,” said Posco CEO Chung Joon-yang at the blowing-in ceremony. “The new 5500-cubic-meter furnace will now mark a new era, and we owe our achievement today to Posco’s world-best ability to design, construct and operate the furnace. The successful relining of the No. 4 Furnace will lay the foundation for a new take-off of Posco.”