Dickinson Mosintrast Completes Glass Furnace Hot Repair Works in Russia

Dickinson Mosintrast; a joint venture between Dickinson Group of Companies and Mosintrast Group recently completed a glass furnace hot repair project for a client in western Russia.

The joint venture was established to provide a range of Dickinson Group of Companies’ specialist furnace and industrial services in Russia and The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). This article will briefly describe the project as well as the company’s Glass Furnace Hot Repair Services in more detail.

The Project

 Part of a glass manufacturer’s furnace roof was failing prematurely and on the verge of collapse, with minor patch works proving ineffective, a more lasting solution was needed. The client called upon the services Dickinson Mosintrast; Global Leading Provider of Furnace and Industrial Services to perform interventions that would allow the furnace to continue running efficiently until the next scheduled shutdown.

The Dickinson Mosintrast team managed to swiftly respond to the emergency, timeously mobilising a team of refractory experts. The team performed hot repair works which involved installing a consistent 300mm layer of castable refractory across the affected area. All of the interventions were made without affecting normal production operations. The project was successfully completed within the scheduled 2 weeks period and was incident/accident free. This was despite the extremely challenging environment in which the works were carried out, some of the major challenges were linked to the extreme temperatures on top of the damaged roof structure as well as the highly unstable surface that was being worked on.   

Furnace Hot Repairs

Generally stated, the hot repairs form part of preventive maintenance interventions made on a furnace in its hot state to restore it to good and safe operating conditions. The hot repairs are carried in conformance to Health and Safety Regulations and are guided by strict procedures and work instructions to avoid any injuries (burns) or heat stress related complications on personnel.

At the most extreme cases, repair works are done with minimal drops in glass levels and without having to take the furnace out of production. The techniques have proved effective in significantly extending furnace life and have been successfully integrated into a number of manufacturers’ maintenance systems.
The company’s hot repair services include the following:
 

• Furnace endoscopy and thermal imaging audits
• Cooldown, heat-up and expansion joint sealing
• Over coating
• Port paving cleaning
• Checker sulfate cleaning
• Target wall repairs and checker removal
• Crown castable over coating
• Port cap castable over coating

Benefits of Glass Furnace Hot Repairs

Timeous hot furnace repairs result in a number of direct and indirect benefits including the following:
 

Longer Refractory Life

Refractory maintenance usually represents a significant portion of glass furnace costs. Extending the life of refractories by a year will result in savings on the refractory materials cost of up to 50%. Even smaller extensions (fractions of a year) may be worthwhile.
 

Lower Fuel Costs

Maintaining the furnace in good condition contributes towards retaining the system’s efficiencies at optimal levels, ultimately avoiding additional fuel costs that would be incurred as efficiencies are lowered.
 

More Consistent Product Quality

Maintaining the furnace in good condition results in the system’s ability to consistently melt all raw materials to the required levels, ultimately contributing towards maintaining optimum levels of system throughputs and quality.
 
For more information, please visit our website www.dgrpint.com or email us on sales@dgrpint.com.