Revolutionary oxygen impulse technology for steel production

From experiment to large-scale industrial use

thyssenkrupp AT.PRO tec GmbH is well known for the development of the sequence impulse process. When used on cupola furnaces, it considerably increased their cost-effectiveness in the past. In over 10 years of development work with Schubert & Salzer as their partner, Dr Rainer Klock and the team at AT.PRO tec succeeded in getting the SIP technology to work on blast furnaces, too, with the help of sliding gate valves. The story of a researcher on the way to becoming a plant manufacturer.

The history of the blast furnace process is a long story of great innovations and technical improvements. Again and again, there have been courageous innovators who were willing to question common methods in order to further optimise the production process of pig iron. In the 18th century, for example, Abraham Darby succeeded in using coke instead of charcoal. As a result, blast furnaces became considerably larger and more efficient. In the 19th century, Edward Alfred Cowper managed an innovation leap with the newly emerging blast preheaters. Today the so-called “Cowpers” are part of every blast furnace plant.

Utilising the “sequence impulse process with induced shock waves”, the blast furnace has now reached the next stage in its evolution. Behind the SIP are thyssenkrupp AT.PRO tec GmbH and its present managing director, Dr Rainer Klock. As a team, they developed the technology over a period of more than 10 years in such a way that its use at the blast furnace became possible at all. Today the employees at AT.PRO tec bundle highly specialised expert knowledge from science and industry for the use of gases in melting processes.

The basic concept of the new process is to activate the areas [...]

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