CISDI has successfully built two new blast furnaces for the Sanming HQ plant in China’s Fujian Province.

Construction of both furnaces began in April 2022. The new BF1 went operational in September 2023 with BF2 following in July 2024.

BF2’s blow-in marked the completion of the plant’s programme to upgrade its production to smarter, greener levels.

Construction of the furnaces was challenging. Narrow spaces, rainy seasons, hot weather, typhoons and controls in place during the pandemic had to be worked around, and it was vital that production went on without interruption.

CISDI’s team coordinated the 20-plus companies working on the project, ensuring a smooth progression and the hitting of all targets.

Highlights and achievements:

•           CISDI’s highly-efficient, low-nitrogen, staggered cyclone ceramic burners have been applied to the innovative top-combustion hot stove.

•           Labour intensity at the casthouse has been reduced by applying a one-touch taphole drill, automatic drill change, a smart hot metal-sampling robot and railway-aligned locomotive tech.

•           The slag granulating system features siphon bottom-filtering, smart slag-grabbing and combined truck and train transport.

•           National ultra-low emissions standards have been met with engineering designs for furnace top gas equalising and recovery, clean gas back-blowing of dry-way dust collection and the BPRT (blast furnace power recovery turbine, featuring coaxially-driven blower, motor and turbine).

•           The flying dust area is fully enclosed and an efficient dust suppression system minimises the impact of secondary flying dusts. It collects ashes into a suction and exhaust tank car for enclosed transportation or collects dusts into a conveying pipeline and sends them to a central, plant-wide ash tank.

The new blast furnace plant at Sanming HQ

CISDI’s team, pictured at Sanming’s new blast furnace 2 casthouse platform