Blast Furnace

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The blast furnace uses iron ore as the iron-bearing raw materials, coke and pulverised coal as reducing agents and lime or limestone as fluxing agents. The main objective of blast furnace iromaking is to produce hot metal with consistent quality for the BOS steelmaking process. Typically the specification of steel works requires a hot metal with 0.3–0.7% Si, 0.2–0.4% Mn, and 0.06–0.13% P, and a temperature as high as possible (1480–1520 °C at tapping). A modern large blast furnace has a hearth diameter of 14–15 m, and a height of 35 m with an internal volume of about 4500 m3. One such large blast furnace can produce 10,000 tonnes hot metal per day.