The FINEX II plant, which was developed by POSCO with in-house technology and was the first to be commercialized, has been reborn as a performance improvement.
According to POSCO, on May 16th, FINEX II plant finished the first standby operation in February and underwent 79 days of rationalization before producing 1,200 tons of metal in 26 hours since it caught fire on May 11th.
FINEX is an innovative technology that changed the technology paradigm of steel industry itself. In particular, as iron ore and bituminous coal in the form of cheap powder are used as raw materials, investment and production costs can be reduced by 85 percent compared to normal blast furnaces.
The FINEX II plant is the first commercial facility developed by POSCO in the early 1990s and has produced 14 million tons of molten metal for 10 years and 11 months since its introduction in 2007.
POSCO has streamlined the durability of its FINEX II plant by changing the material of the jet plane, which divides the gas and the steel ore, into stainless steel.
It also extended the life of the refractory by supplying gas pipes that inhale carbon monoxide (CO) gas directly through underground pipes instead of installing them on the wall of the reactor.
The company also installed additional facilities such as the Sung HyungCheol (HCI) dry-process facilities and coal briquette transfer equipment, which were applied to the FINEX 3 plant to reduce pollution and costs.
With the successful operation of the FINEX 2 plant, it is expected that the export of FINEX technology will be resilient. The FINEX process also demonstrates the long-term operating cycle of the existing blast furnace, making the reliability of the technology even more reliable.
The first atmosphere of the first furnace in Pohang has been around for six years, the second atmosphere has been for around 14 years and the third atmosphere has continued for 26 years. As the FINEX 2 plant also completed 10 years and 11 months of operation, which is more than two years longer than FINEX 1 plant, the 2nd plant will have a longer standby run than the first atmosphere.
“Currently, POSCO has more than 200 domestic patents and more than 50 patents in over 20 countries, including technology for molding technology related to FINEX. We have concluded agreements with global steel companies such as China to negotiate export of FINEX method,” said a POSCO official.
