The Bessemer process enabling to produce high-quality steels was implemented at steel mills of the Urals region more than 200 years ago. At the beginning of the 20th century, the process was modified by scientists from the Mining Insti-tute and was then adopted by copper and nickel alloy producers. The converter process became one of the key processing stages with Russian copper and nickel smelters. This paper examines certain ways to improve the tuyere air flow in a horizontal converter. The authors came up with a generic equation for cal-culating specific blast air pressure and discuss the use of hydrothermal and aerodynamic techniques for tuyere purging. The blast air limit was determined for a horizontal converter that is characterized with massive melt ejections. The authors demonstrate that, in spite of all the process and design improve-ments, the modern converter process still has three major drawbacks. They include process cycling, the gas ductwork not being completely tight, unbal-anced thermal and chemical status of the vessel leading to excessive thermal and chemical loads on the tuyere zone and incomplete slag formation in zones that are farther from the tuyeres. Research work is ongoing on a novel continuous converter design which involves the use of special-design unsubmerged tuyeres. Such tuyeres produce spatially oriented high-pressure blasts which enable con-sistent rotation of the molten matte in a tight cylindrical vessel.