Twice a year we run a BOS maintenance campaign to rebrick our two furnaces. As we clean and rebrick, tonnes of dust and spillages need to be removed from various floors in the BOS building.
Historically, we used wheelbarrows to move the waste from the floor, took it down in the lift, across the Charging Aisle, and finally we emptied the wheelbarrows into the Transfer Pit. As you can imagine, pretty repetitive and very slow!
Thinking about reducing manual handling and looking after the backs and arms of their teammates, the Steel Making team came up with a craft idea. They introduced a dump chute so that waste could be dumped directly from the BOS building floor into a large bin or slag pot positioned at ground level.
As with everything, safety comes first, so the team extended the chute outlet with a hard pipe and kick to a desired height, introduced a mesh on the chute inlet to avoid blockages, and added a lock-up cage on the chute inlet so that the chute can be used only when a bin is placed at the chute outlet.
And it’s been a resounding success. For the past two campaigns the team has been able to ditch the ‘barrow and the BOS clean up has been made quicker, safer, and more efficient. All in all, the team have reduced cleaning costs by about $10,000 per campaign, and in the most recent campaign, the clean up time went from 13 days in the 2020 campaign to just 8!
Nice work, as always Steel Making!