The Takehara copper refinery of the Mitsui Mining & Smelting Company Limited of Japan commissioned a BBOC in its precious metals department in 1993.
Prior to the installation of the BBOC, the Takehara refinery refined a mixture of copper and lead anode slimes in a three reverberatory furnaces (two operating and one being rebricked) in a process that had a cycle time of 104 hours for refining 6 t of bullion.
The reverberatory furnaces were replaced with a single BBOC with a charge capacity of 6 t of feed. The cycle time was reduced to 50 hours. The use of the BBOC reduced the energy consumption from 74 GJ/t to 27 GJ/t and also had better bismuth elimination than the reverberatory furnaces.