Study tour of the blast furnace committee to Argentina and Brazil

The VDEh blast furnace committee has carried through a 14 days' visit to Argentina and Brazil in June 2001. The steel producers in Argentina and Brazil operate modern facilities with long availabilities and excellent operating results. On the other hand Brazil is the most important iron ore supplier for the West European steel industry. CVRD as the world's biggest iron ore producer has proved its efforts to produce high quality iron ores and has demonstrated its plans to increase capacities. With national and global capital investments a raw material giant in iron ore has been grown. The efforts for low cost ironmaking at high availabilities have been discussed with the different blast furnace operators. The operational results have been rated excellently even at partly high reducing agents consumptions as a result to be pressed for producing higher amounts of blast furnace top gas to counteract the electric power crisis which cannot be compared directly to West European standards. Beside this point all furnaces dispose of high quality charge materials (Fe burden, coke) and are operated partlyly at high productivities. Impressive were the long furnace campaigns, from which the furnace No. 1 of CST has to be mentioned. This furnace is on the way of a campaign length until 2008with 25 years and a cumulative 82 million t of hot metal. To achieve this, blast furnace shut downs are avoided. The engineers in all plants are excellently educated and working safety has a high standard. The operators in Argentina are fighting against economical recession, in Brazil capacities are increased export oriented with the aimed market being in the USA and Western Europe.