GrafTech Refractory Systems Newsletter

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Dear Valued Customer:

Since our last Newsletter, several of us have learned a lot more about Iceland and about volcanoes. The volcanic ash from Eyjafjallaj�kull extended or cancelled many business trips. Looking at the global economic recovery, it has some additional similarities, other than canceling trips and being upredictable, to volcanic activities; the growth is fragile but at a very fast rate. Neither can be Volcano Picture

characterized as being very stable. In the steel industry we do see stability and demand recovering fast. Investments in production capacity expansion and campaign extensions are back in corporate budgets.

In this issue, you will read about a new large blast furnace being built by stainless producer TISCO in China as well as an article about another leading Chinese BF operator; Shougang, achieving the longest campaign lives in China on three of their furnaces. There has been a blast furnace conference in Moscow and the world's largest ferroalloy conference will soon start in Finland. Hope to see you there!

TISCO Awards the Hearth Lining Order for their New Blast Furnace #4 to GrafTech

Photo show successful completion of negotiations between Mr. Liu Fu Xing (center) of Taiyuan Iron & Steel, as well as Mr. William Sin (right) and Mr. Peter Duncanson of GrafTech.

Taiyuan Iron and Steel (Group) Company Ltd (TISCO) is planning to build a new large blast furnace #4. The working volume will be 4,774m� and the furnace will be built at their plant in Taiyuan with a planned blow-in date early 2012. Today, TISCO owns and operates 3 blast furnaces and 2 of them have HotPressed™ Brick hearth walls. In fact the new furnace is an identical copy of TISCO's #5 blast furnace, which has been operating very successfully since 2006 Including this order; GrafTech will have delivered 56 hearth linings to Chinese blast furnaces since 1990. You can read about one of these customers in the Shougang experience further down in this Newsletter.

Moscow International Blast Furnace Conference-A Well Attended Event

Mr. Murat speaks at the Moscow Conference.

This Moscow congress was organized by The International Metallurgists Union, Russian Academy of Sciences, The National University of Science and Technology, MetProm Group and Kosogorsky Metallurgical plant. The Congress was held at the National Scientific Research & Technology University in Moscow April 12-16 and the theme was "Blast furnace Practice in the 21st Century". The Congress was very well attended by iron makers from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan and was supported by several local and international companies.

GrafTech presented a paper at the congress entitled, "New Hearth Wall Refractory Direction in Russia and Ukraine". The paper included references to the first orders received by GrafTech from EMZ in Ukraine and Tulachermet in Russia. The GrafTech paper was presented by Richard Pugh (Sales Manager Europe), Edward Goncharov (Sales Representative Russia & Ukraine) and Sergey Murat (Deputy Head of R & D at Tulachermet).
Mr. Murat is very highly respected by Russian and Ukrainian iron makers and his opinions were very much in demand both before and after the GrafTech presentation.

The Shougang Story - The Longest Lining Campaigns in China. Ever.

In our very first Newsletter back in March 2007, we told you about the new Shougang Jingtang #1 blast furnace an enormous 15.5 diameter iron making machine with an annual capacity of 4.5M tons. GrafTech has actually received a total of 12 hearth lining orders from Shougang since 1991 and as expected, these are all performing very well. So well that 3 of these have now broken Chinese records on both service years and accumulated production per cubic meter working volume. Installing HotPressed™ Bricks in the hearths were the right decisions. Here are some more details about these record furnaces:

Shougang #1 (2,536 m�), blow-in August, 1994, Production: 12,500 MT/m�. Operating at full speed.
Shougang #3 (2,536 m�), blow-in June, 1993, Production: 13,200 MT/m�. Operating at full speed.
Shougang #4 (2,100 m�), blow in May, 1992. Stopped in December 2007 as the plant was required to move out of the city of Beijing. Production: 12,467 MT/m�.

E-learning from Steel University - Simulate Your Own BF Operation

�2002-2010 World Steel Association

In this simulation you will play the role of plant metallurgist in charge of the Blast Furnace operations. Your aim is to optimize production of hot metal from your Blast Furnace by selecting appropriate raw materials, production statistics and charging rates. Your results are shown in terms of the mass and heat balance achieved with these settings. Even an experienced ironmaker will find this exercise interesting. We recommend it because it is great fun! This steel making training site is developed in partnership between the World Steel Association and MATTER, The University of Liverpool. Click here to get started!

Please welcome Hercules van der Merwe to the GrafTech Family

Hercules van der Merwe

In order to support you better, we are now expanding our sales and technical service in South Africa with a highly qualified furnace and refractory engineer. Mr. Hercules van der Merwe is our new team member and Accounts Manager for RSA. Hercules has been working as a refractory manager at ArcelorMittal Vanderbijlpark Works for the last 16 years and is a very valuable addition to our team!

Blast Furnace Illustration

GrafTech, HotPressed, ChillKote, C34, GR37, Grade D, NMA, NMD, RP4, SmartRam, UniGraf, RefractoryFlex, FlexLine, and FlexRepair are all trademarks of GrafTech International Holdings Inc. UCAR� is a registered trademark used under license by GrafTech International Holdings Inc. The information contained in or referred to in this newsletter is based on data believed to be reliable but GrafTech makes no warranties, express or implied, as to its accuracy and assumes no liability arising out of its use. GrafTech's liability to purchasers is expressly limited to the terms and conditions of sale. �2010 GrafTech International Holdings Inc.