Every XZK zonal lining proposal is free, delivered within 48 hours, and only as good as the data behind it. Plants that send complete operating data receive grade maps they can build a campaign plan around; plants that send only a vessel capacity receive a conditional document with assumptions attached. This article lists exactly what to send, what comes back, and why each input changes the answer.
What to Send
- The vessel drawing — the single most valuable document. Shell diameters, cone geometry, taphole position, purging arrangement: the dimensions every shape must respect and the geometry every zone boundary is drawn on. CAD formats (DWG, DXF, STEP) or a clear dimensioned PDF both work.
- Operating data — capacity, tapping temperature, heats per day, blowing or refining practice, and steel route (BOF/EAF, secondary refining positions). This sets the thermal and mechanical duty of every zone.
- Slag chemistry — basicity, FeO, and MgO content where known. Slag chemistry is the difference between a slag line grade that lasts and one that dissolves; the proposal's antioxidant package and carbon level are tuned to it directly.
- Current wear history — campaign lengths achieved, and where the lining failed: residual thickness map or photographs from the last teardown. A teardown photo is worth more than a year of estimates, because it shows the mechanism, not just the symptom.
- Consumption record — refractory consumption per ton of steel by position, where available. This is what the forecast will be checked against, and what makes the proposal a budget document rather than a technical exercise.
What Comes Back
The proposal document has four sections, in a fixed format so proposals are comparable across vendors. First, the grade map: a grade assigned to every wear position, each justified by the dominant failure mechanism there — the reasoning is shown, so your engineers can audit and challenge it. Second, the consumption forecast: per position, per campaign, and per ton of steel — the number the budget actually runs on. Third, the projected campaign life with the controlling failure mode named, so everyone knows what will end the campaign and roughly when. Fourth, the verification plan: what will be measured at each maintenance window, so the forecast becomes a measured document at teardown rather than an opinion. Total turnaround: 24–48 hours from receipt of usable data. Cost: nothing.
Why Free Is Not Loss-Making
The proposal costs us engineering hours, and it is free because it is the qualification step of the relationship: a plant that receives a reasoned grade map has, in the same document, everything needed to see whether the supplier understands its furnace. Suppliers who charge for proposals charge for the meeting; suppliers who issue them free have decided to compete on the document. Either way, the plant wins by sending enough data to make the proposal real — the same effort, better answer.
Common Gaps and How We Fill Them
When some inputs are missing, the proposal states its assumptions inline rather than hiding them: "slag basicity assumed 3.2 pending analysis — grade XZK-MC-14AF2 is insensitive within ±0.4, the taphole seating grade is not." Gaps that materially change the answer are flagged as open items with a suggested measurement. The result is a document that improves as the customer's data improves, version by version, until the assumptions are all replaced by measurements — usually by the second campaign. That iterative quality is deliberate: the proposal is designed to be the first document in a multi-campaign engineering relationship, not the last word of a quotation.
How the Forecast Gets Validated — and Corrected
A consumption forecast is a hypothesis until teardown proves it, so the proposal's verification plan is written to make that proof cheap. At each scheduled maintenance window, the crew records residual thickness at the named measurement positions — the positions the grade map already flagged as controlling, not convenient ones — and the readings go back into the same spreadsheet that produced the forecast. Two camps of result follow. If measured wear tracks predicted wear, the grade map is confirmed and the next campaign reorders the same specification with tighter confidence intervals. If a position wears faster than predicted, the mechanism is named at the teardown and the map is revised at that position specifically, leaving the rest intact. That discipline is what makes the second campaign's forecast materially better than the first: it is not a new opinion, it is the previous forecast with one assumption replaced by a measurement. Plants that run three campaigns this way typically arrive at a grade map nobody else in their organisation could have written, because it is built from their own furnace's history rather than from a supplier's general experience.
What the Proposal Deliberately Does Not Do
Honesty about scope is part of the document's value. A zonal proposal does not replace the furnace's thermal model, does not certify a campaign life as a guarantee, and does not claim to predict events outside the lining — a burden distribution change, an off-spec slag regime, a tuyere failure or a prolonged outage will each move the outcome more than any grade choice does. Where those risks are visible in the data we received, they are listed as assumptions with their sensitivity stated. The proposal also does not lock the buyer to a single supplier position-by-position: the grade map is expressed in properties — MgO content, carbon level, antioxidant package, bulk density, HMOR — so a plant can source any position against it and compare vendors on the same technical basis. That portability is intentional. A document that only works when everything is bought from its author is a quotation wearing an engineer's coat; a document whose conclusions survive independent sourcing is an engineering deliverable that happens to be free.
A Worked Example of the Difference
Two enquiries for the same 180 t converter class illustrate the stakes. Enquiry A sent capacity and requested a price per ton of brick; it received a conditional grade list and a price — accurate, and un-actionable. Enquiry B sent the drawing, blowing practice, slag analysis and the last teardown photos showing trunnion wear concentrating at one boundary; it received a zonal map with a MAC transition grade at the boundary that was causing the groove, a forecast within a few percent of the eventual actuals, and a campaign plan the plant's engineers co-authored. Same furnace class, same supplier, 48 hours apart — the data made the difference.
Start your proposal through the contact page; the equipment checklists on the application system pages list the data points per furnace class, and the Hyundai Steel Dangjin case study shows a completed proposal-to-campaign cycle end to end.
