Mechel PAO reports its results in the Ecological Awareness Year announced in Russia in 2017.
The group’s production facilities implemented a series of large-scale projects in a bid to improve the ecological situation in the regions of its production and administrative operations. Those include:
– Mechel-Coke conducted technical upgrading of its benzene facility in the framework of a cooperation agreement with Russia’s Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources and Chelyabinsk region. The upgrade created a closed coke gas cooling cycle in the heat-exchange equipment, without coke-oven effluent having contact with the atmosphere, which enabled the plant to completely eliminate a major source of waste emission. This technology is up to the highest global standard in the coke industry.
– Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant modernized waste and dust collectors and gas cleaners at its key production facilities. These measures enabled the plant to improve its steelmaking operations’ ecological safety by ensuring high efficiency of its stack gas cleaning, with up to 99% of dust being collected at several facilities.
– Beloretsk Metallurgical Plant launched a new sewage treatment facility. On exit, industrial effluent and sewage are compliant with every water-protection norm. At the final stage, the cleansed water also undergoes UV disinfections. Launching the sewage station is a step toward shifting to acid-free production in the high-resistance wire workshop. Thanks to this upgrade, waste flow volume is down eight times.
– Yakutugol Holding Company significantly increased works on disturbed land rehabilitation. Mined-land reclamation area totaled 123 hectares, which is 75% more than in 2016. On 49 hectares the company’s experts conducted technical and biological reclamation, by applying a layer of fertile soil, planting tens of thousands of trees and sowing 300 kilograms of grass mixture.
– Southern Kuzbass Coal Company in 2017 completed a mined-land reclamation project jointly with the United Nations. Scientists sought to confirm the possibility of using waste from coal mining and washing in restoring disturbed land. Specially chosen types of plants were planted at Krasnogorsky Open Pit’s abandoned grounds. Scientists monitored their growth, state of the soil and build-up of the fertile soil layer. This project earned high praise from the expert community and was acknowledged as one of the best in the Ecological Project of the Year nomination at the Russia Mining Award on the sidelines of the mining industry’s MINEX Russia 2017 forum. This method of mined-land self-reclamation was recommended for other mining companies in the Kemerovo region.
“Ecological responsibility is one of Mechel Group’s underlying principles of business management in the regions of its presence. Since its founding, the company has invested a total of approximately 16 billion rubles in environment protection. Our efforts on decreasing the impact our facilities have on the environment are systematic and naturally not limited to the Ecological Awareness Year. In 2018, we will continue our ecological programs with a special focus on our Chelyabinsk facilities,” Mechel PAO’s Chief Executive Officer Oleg Korzhov commented. (MetalInfo/Ukrainian metal)
