Until recently, the refractory wear lining of the converter vessels of the BOS2 steel plant of Tata Steel in the Netherlands was mainly originated from our own refractory plant. Due to the green, clean and circular future plans of the steel plant in IJmuiden our dedicated brick plant has closed.
Alternative suppliers had to be selected and therefore several suppliers were approached for a proposal for a refractory wear lining of the converters.
To select the most suitable refractory lining, a transparent, verifiable and logical selection method was developed based on the experiences in wear of the converter lining in BOS2 with the in house produced materials. For the different parts of the lining, the contributions of different wear mechanisms have been assigned. Per wear mechanism, the test results of all materials offered are put in order and ranked. Thereafter, based on these rankings and the significance of the different mechanisms, a ranking of bricks was made for the different parts of the lining, followed by a final ranking of each supplier for the bricks of a full lining.
This method was used for the selection of the current refractory wear lining of the BOS2 converter vessels. The results out of plant trials will be used to finetune the selection method.