NLMK Group, an international steel company with operations in Russia, the USA and the European Union, has begun construction and assembly works at energy infrastructure and gas treatment units at steelmaking shop (BOF Shop) No. 2 (its current capacity is 8.5 million tons per year) as a part of a large-scale upgrade of blast furnace (BF) and basic oxygen furnace (BOF) operations at NLMK Lipetsk.
These activities are a part of a large-scale project to reconstruct the largest of NLMK’s two BOF shops, that will enable an increase in its productivity by 19% to 10 million tons per year of steel, and cut specific air emissions by 56% by 2020.
Konstantin Lagutin, NLMK Group Vice President of Investment Projects, said: “This large-scale reconstruction project addresses a whole set of NLMK Group’s strategic objectives, including growth of production output, efficiency improvement, as well as drastically reducing environmental footprint. We are not only going to boost productivity of two of the shop’s three BOF’s and radically cut emissions; we are also going to enable the use of BOF gases for captive energy generation.”
As part of the project to reconstruct BOF Shop-2, there will be a phased replacement of BOF’s No. 2 and No. 3, 300 tons each with units of 330 tons each; new oxygen supply machines will be installed, and advanced process automation and analysis systems for off-gases will be implemented. Each of the new BOF’s will be equipped with gas-exhaust ducts with emission recovery and treatment systems.
The recovery system will operate based on a high-efficiency process with the use of finely dispersed water supply. Treated water reuse will ensure a two-fold reduction in water consumption. Special screens and exhaust systems will reduce the dust content at work places by over 95%.
The project was launched in 2014, with the design of the gas cleaning system. NLMK plans to complete the entire reconstruction in 2020. The total cost of the project is estimated at RUB 17.2 billion. This project is part of NLMK Group’s previously announced program to perform major repairs with partial reconstruction at NLMK Lipetsk midstream operations.
In 2011, similar reconstruction was completed at BOF Shop No. 1. As a result, specific emissions at the shop were down by 61%. (NLMK/Ukrainian metal)