Tenova Pyromet, part of Tenova Mining & Minerals, has successfully completed the replacement of Assmang Chrome Machadodorp Works Furnace No 2’s electrode pressure rings, four weeks ahead of schedule. Awarded as a turnkey contract in April 2012, the project included verification and adjustment of designs, supply and installation of lower electrode equipment, including pressure rings and heat shields, manufactured from stainless steel, as opposed to mild steel in the original equipment. This conversion to stainless steel was required to enable the equipment to withstand higher temperature required for smelting manganese.

The furnace conversion was carried out without a single lost-time injury. Fancois Smith, Tenova Pyromet Project Manager said “This was a significant achievement, given the challenging conditions of the brownfields project. We were working in very tight spaces, which required much of the rigging and moving of the heavy equipment to be carried out manually.”

The new equipment used for the furnace rebuild was based on the Tenova Tagliaferri design, which has been used in many furnace operations worldwide since 1968. Smith stated “In our planning, we also had to take into account working seamlessly with a number of other contractors on site.”

In the converted 30 MVA FeMn furnace, manganese ore, from Assmang manganese mines in South Africa’s Northern Cape, is fed with reductant in submerged arc furnace where it is beneficiated into manganese and slag. Tenova Pyromet was responsible for the orginal Furnace 2 Rebuild, when the furnace was still producing ferrochrome. The 33 MVA, 29 MW furnace featured a 1,270 mm Tagliaferri electrode column and was designed to produce 69,000 tpa of ferrochrome. T