ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,378,615, issued on Aug. 5, was assigned to JFE STEEL Corp. (Tokyo).
"Blast furnace operation method" was invented by Kazuhira Ichikawa (Tokyo), Yasukazu Hayasaka (Tokyo), Yohei Kitamura (Tokyo) and Natsuo Ishiwata (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A blast furnace operation method comprising a blast furnace to start up smoothly and perform operation after suspending air blowing by removing as much as possible residual coke that remains inside the furnace during suspension of air blowing and becomes an obstacle to discharging solidified matter. In this blast furnace operation method, air blowing is suspended with the height of a surface...