One of Africa’s biggest smelter and mineral processing furnace contractors, Dickinson Group, is under licence to manufacture a US company’s Big Block refractory lining solution for furnaces and coke ovens in South Africa.
Dickinson Group hopes to introduce this solution to the steel, glass, copper and aluminium industries before the end of this year.
The company is constructing a precast manufacturing plant at its premises in Vereeniging, Gauteng, and has ordered equipment, such as mixers, vibration tables and computer numerically controlled form-work manufacturing equipment, which offers the benefit of automation when making formers for precast shapes.
The construction forms part of the company’s extension at its existing precast manufacturing plant, in Vereeniging.
Dickinson Group furnace services director Anton Briedenhann explains that the benefit of the specialised precast Big Block is that any desired shape can always be achieved. The reduced number of joints extends the life of the lining, as coke particles that infiltrate joints destroy refractory linings.
In addition to extending the lining’s life, the reduction of joints reduces leakages of coke oven or blast furnace gas used in the manufacturing of coke.
“The Big Block solution is easy to install. Refractory skills have been diminishing over several years in South Africa and not many youth are interested in becoming refrac- tory bricklayers, as it takes years of training and skills development to become a skilled refractory bricklayer. As a result, the Big Block solution becomes more of a rigging exercise because it is less specialised and fewer skills are required to align it with a rig during installation,” Briedenhann explains.
The Big Block modules replace a number of bricks and are installed using rigging equipment, reducing the need for contracted bricklayers and reducing capital costs.
Compared with bricklaying, this solution takes less installation time, owing to rigging. The block’s tongue and groove design streamlines the installation process.
Once the manufacturing plant is operational, Dickinson Group will be able to precast Big Blocks using any quality mat- erial for any furnace, rotary kiln or coke oven.
The company will have strict control over the formwork and design to ensure the Big Block modules are manufactured with extreme accuracy and allow for expansion or shrinkage of the castable as required.
The Big Block solution will cater for any application where refractory materials, such as alumina, silica, magnesite or any other applications of refractories, are used.
Dickinson Group introduced the Big Block solution to the local cement industry last year, where it has been used successfully for several projects.
“We hope to manufacture the Big Block solution in South Africa soon to reduce the amount of imports from other countries. The US company will supply Dickinson Group with its patented designs that will be required to manufacture these blocks,” adds Briedenhann.