Ougrée, the last tapping
Shutting down a blast furnace in such a fashion that it can be restarted at a later point involves removing the liquid and solidified materials in the hearth of the furnace below the tap hole. This part of the furnace is called Sau (=sow) in German, le loup (=wolf) in French or salamander in English. Its liquid part gets tapped using a drill and an oxygen lance. In Ougrée, this was done yesterday. Furnaceman Pierre Machiroux took this video:
And this video of Pierre shows how cooling the furnace shell looked like:
Thanks, Pierre!
