Furnace Tapping 101

The Furnace Tapping Conference series is an example of problem-based conferencing. It focusses on tasks all smelters have in common, namely the tapping of liquid slag and alloy or matte from the reactor. The series draws on perspectives from across commodities and across disciplines in Science, Engineering, and Technology. It is a platform where ideas are exchanged between operators, engineering and support, and researchers on how to optimally manage the processes involved. The paper presented here is aimed at new-comers to the field, hence the title Furnace Tapping 101, and is written in two parts. In Part 1, Natural Language Processing (NLP), a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI), is applied in the review of papers included in the Proceedings of Furnace Tapping 2014 and Furnace Tapping 2018 which took place in South Africa. In Part 2, terminology which newcomers to the field might be unfamiliar with, is explained in the form of a dialogue between a Mathematician and a Pyrometallurgist.