China's First Iron-Smelting Furnace Finishes UpgradingChina's first iron-smelting furnace -- the No.1 iron-smelting furnace in the Wuhan Iron and Steel Company Group, Hubei Province -- has just finished being upgraded.According to corporate sources, a great number of the world's new smelting technologies have been applied to the upgraded furnace which has a cubage of 2,200 cu m, up from 1,386 cu m and a designed annual production capacity of 1.7 million tons, up from 820,000 tons. The upgraded furnace will have a working term of 10 years. The upgrading began in 1999 and cost 550 million yuan (about 66.3 million U.S. dollars). Eight percent of the spending was on the application of a number of environment-friendly technologies and on installation of such equipment, said the sources. Built in September 1958, the No.1 furnace of the Wuhan Iron and Steel Company Group was the first large iron-smelting furnace of a world-standard to be built after the founding of New China in 1949. The furnace's first pot of liquefied iron was overseen by late Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong. The furnace has churned out 25 million tons of pig iron in the past four decades. |
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