Grant to benefit blast furnace research

HAMMOND -- Researchers at Purdue University Calumet plan to use a $1.3 million grant to develop technology that will help prolong the life of blast furnaces by predicting where erosion is occurring.\nChenn Zhou, a Purdue Calumet professor of mechanical engineering, will head a team that includes representatives from two area steel mills working on the project during the next two years.\nThe university announced Tuesday it had received the grant from the state-funded Indiana 21st Century Research and Technology Fund.\n"This research will be of tremendous help in allowing steel mills to operate more efficiently," said Tony Armstrong of the 21st Century Fund.\nThe savings to steel mills in time and money would give them a competitive edge in the world market, university officials said. Blast furnaces, the huge kettles where raw materials are melted down so steel can be made, are considered old after about 15 years.\n"It will increase productivity and reduce cost," Michael Gealt, dean of Purdue Calumet's engineering school, said. "It will have a big impact on the economy of northwest Indiana."\nZhou described the grant award as a beginning, with "work, work and more work," ahead for the research team, which is made up of professors from the Calumet and West Lafayette campuses of Purdue, as well as engineers from Ispat Inland Inc. and U.S. Steel Corp.\n"The blast furnace is their life," Zhou said of the industry representatives. "They just want to make their life longer, and so do I"