SMS Group has completed the hearth repair of a blast furnace at Třinecké Železárny in the Czech Republic, in just 42 days.
BF4 was showing a high degree of wear in the hearth area and the hearth linings, so SMS replaced the carbon blocks and reprofiled the entire section with heat-resistant concrete.
This targeted approach prevented the need for a full rebuild and reduced downtime.
Jam Zmrzlík, a project manager at SMS, said: “We delivered a targeted, high-quality partial hearth repair that met the customer’s need for the shortest possible outage.
“The chosen method allowed us to confine interventions to the critical sector and complete full reprofiling efficiently, while unexpected tasks such as cutting a frozen salamander were executed rapidly without delaying the handover.”
The furnace has a production volume of 3.1Kt of hot metal per year.
Třinecké Železárny was founded in 1839 and is the Czech Republic’s largest producer of steel.
