Blast Furnace No. 1 at POSCO’s Gwangyang Steelworks in South Jeolla Province has been reborn as the largest blast furnace in the world. POSCO held a ceremony for the initial firing of Gwangyang Steelworks Blast Furnace No. 1 on Friday after completing the project to renovate the facility.

 

At the ceremony, POSCO Chairman Chung Joon-yang said, “Gwangyang Blast Furnace No. 1 has become the symbol that is responsible for production of world best molten water as it represents the integration of POSCO’s unique technological capacity in the entire iron-making process, including blast furnace operation, raw material quality, and management of facilities.”

 

POSCO expanded the internal capacity of Blast Furnace No. 1 from 3,800 cubic meters to 6,000 cubic meters by mobilizing all different innovative engineering methods through the project. It is the world’s largest in scale that exceeds Chinese Shagang Group’s Blast Furnace No. 1 (5,800 cubic meters), which was previously the biggest. There are 21 large scale blast furnaces with a capacity of over 5,000 cubic meters each worldwide.