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Kobe Steel to reline No. 3 Blast Furnace at Kakogawa Works

May 8, 2014

Kobe Steel, Ltd. plans to reline the No. 3 Blast Furnace at its Kakogawa Works in western Japan. The company will shut down the blast furnace from the end of September 2016 for a 90-day period to undertake the work. Kobe Steel will then restart the blast furnace at the end of December the same year. The renovation will cost approximately 20 billion yen.

Kakogawa Works' No. 3 Blast Furnace has been in operation since April 1996, when it was started up for the second time, and 2016 will mark its 20th year of continuous operation. As the blast furnace refractory has aged over the years, Kobe Steel will shut down the blast furnace at the end of September 2016 for relining.

The outer steel shell of the blast furnace will continue to be used, but the carbon bricks at the blast furnace bottom have been damaged and will be completely replaced. In addition, the use of copper staves, noted for their high cooling efficiency, will be expanded. At the same time, the inner profile of the blast furnace will be optimized and further improvements will be made to the raw material charging system to ensure stable operation of the blast furnace.

Operating costs will be reduced by further increasing the use of low-cost raw materials with Kobe Steel's world-class production technology, which incorporates a high ratio of pulverized coal in blast furnace operations.

As previously announced, Kobe Steel plans to shut down the blast furnace and other upstream operations at its Kobe Works and transfer those operations to Kakogawa Works in fiscal 2017. The relining of the No. 3 Blast Furnace is timed in anticipation of this transfer.

Outline of the Relining Project