Posco's Pohang plant rolls out hot steel with latest smart furnace

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Posco's Pohang plant rolls out hot steel with latest smart furnace

A real-time video of a blast furnace at Posco's Pohang steel mill [POSCO]

A real-time video of a blast furnace at Posco's Pohang steel mill [POSCO]

 
POHANG, North Gyeongsang — A mass of molten iron flows like an orange glowing waterfall with sparks at a blast furnace in Posco’s Pohang steel mill in North Gyeongsang on Thursday.
 
Even some 50 meters (164 feet) away from the furnace, the exceptionally high heat engulfs anyone in the vicinity, enough to make it feel like your shoes would be burned off your feet. 
 
The electronic thermometer read 1,442 degrees Celsius, or 2,627 degrees Fahrenheit.
 
“This blast furnace, what we call the heart of the Pohang plant, runs 24/7 for 365 days a year, without stopping for even a second,” said Choi Myeong-seok, head of the No. 2 blast furnace, during a press tour on March 23.
 
 
A Posco employee works at its Pohang steel plant in North Gyeongsang. [YONHAP]

A Posco employee works at its Pohang steel plant in North Gyeongsang. [YONHAP]

 
The Pohang steel mill has completely resumed all operations since Jan. 20, exactly 135 days after it was hit by Typhoon Hinnamnor.
 
The plant, which is about three times the size of Yeouido in western Seoul, was shut down on Sept. 6 as a nearby river overflowed due to the typhoon's record-breaking 500 millimeters (19.7 inches) of rainfall.
 
The shutdown was the first ever in the factory's 49-year history. The Pohang steel mill contributes 24 percent of Korea’s total steel production every year.
 
The Posco Pohang steel mill floods on Sept. 6, 2022. [YONHAP]

The Posco Pohang steel mill floods on Sept. 6, 2022. [YONHAP]

Posco employees help with post-flood recovery at its Pohang plant. [POSCO]

Posco employees help with post-flood recovery at its Pohang plant. [POSCO]

 
The No. 2 blast furnace is also called a “smart furnace” as various advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and big data have been applied to automatically manage and inspect the conditions of the furnace.


The No. 1 furnace was shut permanently in Dec. 2021 after operating for 48 years.

 
“The most important part of a steel plant is maintaining the temperature of the furnace at some 1,500 degrees Celsius all the time, and we now have a system that automatically measures the temperature in real-time,” Choi said. “Before, staff would manually have to go near it to measure the temperature, around 10 times a day.”
 
The AI system also gives off a warning signal when there is a problem in the process or in the quality of iron ore.
 
With the addition of the smart furnace, total production rose by 86,000 tons compared to before.
 
The No. 2 blast furnace in Posco's Pohang steel plant in North Gyeongsang. [POSCO]

The No. 2 blast furnace in Posco's Pohang steel plant in North Gyeongsang. [POSCO]

 
“We were able to improve the defect rate by 63 percent as well,” Choi added.
 
The produced iron is then moved to continuous casting facilities, in which they are cooled and solidified into intermediate forms such as slabs some 250 millimeters (6 inches) thick.
 
The tour then continued on to the hot rolling facilities, the final phase of steel making, in which the slabs are rolled with 2,000 tons of pressure. The rolling mills make the slabs just 1 millimeter thick for the final product, coils.
 
“The No. 2 hot strip facility was flooded with around 1.5 meters of water, and 47 oil tanks in the basement were submerged under the water,” said Seo Min-gyo, head of the No. 2 hot strip facility.
 
The No. 2 hot strip facility handles 33 percent of steel production in the Pohang plant. It is the largest of three rolling facilities currently available in the plant. 
 
“Of the 15 motor drives, the equipment that offers electricity to motors, 11 had to be completely changed," Seo added. "Experts predicted that it would need at least a year to be fully restored."
 
 
A Posco employee works at the Pohang steel plant. [POSCO]

A Posco employee works at the Pohang steel plant. [POSCO]

 
Jindal Steel Works provided its own motor drives to Posco upon chairman Choi Jeong-woo's call. Nippon Steel and Hyundai Steel also offered their equipment for the rapid recovery of the Pohang plant.
 
A total of 1.4 million people pitched in to help with restoration, the steelmaker said, including from Pohang, the government and other companies.
 
"Production is well underway, and the volume even exceeded our target," Choun Si-youl, deputy head of the works process and quality sector, said at the Pohang plant after the tour.
 
"Quality is also guaranteed as we raised it to 83 percent of the pre-typhoon level."
 
Posco is the world's largest steelmaker in terms of production capacity.
 
Its Gwangyang plant in South Jeolla is the world's single largest steelmaking facility, followed by the Pohang mill.

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]
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