Drives increase blast furnace reliability at UK steelworks 01 November 2012

An unnamed UK steelworks has taken a new approach to the open gear systems typically used to convey material to the blast furnace – with the installation of a new enclosed gearbox solution.

Developed and installed by Brevini Power Transmissions, it protects the mechanism and is also claimed to provide the significant motive power required while reducing both energy consumption and noise.

The steel mill, located in the north of England, operates four blast furnaces, each fed by two skips transported on a counterweight winching system.

The previous drive comprised an open gear system, which consisted of a large ring gear driven by two pinions that were each, in turn, driven by a smaller gearbox.

Due to wear-related reliability issues, one of the winch systems needed replacing and hence plant engineers investigated an alternative before signing up to the Brevini solution.

Dave Brown, sales manager for Brevini UK, explains that, by using a Posired 2 Type PD63 three-stage helical reduction gearbox, the firm's engineers were able to supply a drive that could transfer the high power from the 410kW electric motors to the winch and carry the 7.8m3 skips at the required speeds.

The solutions significantly reduced noise and vibration during operation which in turn is set to significantly increase reliability and reduce maintenance costs, he explains.

"Steel works are a very tough environment and the site engineers understand that specifying anything but high quality power transmission equipment is a mistake," states Brown.

"What we were able to do was provide a flexible product that could be designed around their requirements and still deliver at a competitive price and realistic time scale," he continues.

"More and more of our retrofit work for heavy-duty applications is being won on the basis that we will provide a solution – not just offer something off the shelf – but without the traditional downsides of cost and long lead times."

Since the drive has been installed in the blast furnace it has operated far beyond the capabilities of the system it replaced.

Indeed, Brown reports that it has already reduced the site's maintenance requirements – so much so that orders have been placed to supply similar designs to one of the other furnaces at that site, in addition to another steelworks in Port Talbot.

Brian Tinham

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Brevini UK Ltd

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