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The Munphyong Smeltery has introduced a coke-free lead smelting technology into production.

The new lead smelting technology, the first of its kind in the world metallurgical industry, clearly proved its scientific accuracy in the period of the past five-year plan for national economic development.

Twenty years ago, the officials and working people of the Munphyong Smeltery put an end to the nonferrous metal production relying on imported coke and embarked on the road of Juche-based nonferrous metal production in high spirits.

They buckled down to the establishment of a production process entirely relying on the locally available fuel and groped their way to the building of a new Korean-style nonferrous metallurgical industry with decades-long painstaking quest and devoted efforts.

Fully conscious that completing a coke-free smelting method at any cost is the only way for the smeltery to survive and the way to patriotism for building up independence of the country’s economy, its officials and working people made every possible effort, making coal briquettes with anthracite and running the furnace with rod coal. But the door to success did not open easily.

So the smeltery opted for introducing the nonferrous metal production method based on the method of using the blowing pipe-type oxidation furnace, one of the coke-free smelting methods which had become a global trend at that time.

It completed the technical process and gave it a trial run, but the cost for operating the furnace was said to be enormous.

“At that time we learned a lesson that we could not realize Juche-based lead production if we employ other’s technology dogmatically without considering the specific conditions of our country,” said Manager Kwon Yong Nam.

The employees of the smeltery hardened their will again and redoubled efforts. In the course of it, they came up with an idea that they could make agglomerate with the help of a rotary kiln.

As the method of using rotary kiln was not found in any technical documents and there were no precedents for applying it in other countries, it provoked a heated argument among the authoritative scientists and technicians in the metallurgical circles.

But the smeltery developed the new technology inch by inch, switching from a small test furnace over to the pilot production process and then to the stage of industrialization with a determination that it should buckle down to the project without condition and succeed at any cost if it is possible even a little and that if it does not have a try, it will remain an empty word to put the nonferrous metallurgical industry on a Juche basis.

Finally, a lead smelting industry based on the new revolving furnace-electric furnace method in the world has been established.

Over the past three years, the smeltery has steadily improved the operation technology of the new lead production process and trained enough technicians and skilled workers for the operation of the process.

The establishment of the Juche-oriented lead smelting process has brought large economic profits to the smeltery and markedly improved the ecological environment.