SAIL commissions country's largest blast furnace at Rourkela Steel Plant

KOLKATA: Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) commissioned the country's largest blast furnace, "Durga", at its Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) on Saturday. The furnace was operationalised in the presence of SAIL chairman, Mr C S Verma who visited the furnace and inspected the facilities, will more than double RSP's hot metal capacity to 4.5 million tonne per annum (mtpa). Also present on the occasion were SAIL's Director (Technical) Mr SS Mohanty, Director (Projects & Business Planning) Mr T S Suresh, CEO of RSP Mr GS Prasad and senior officers and employees of the steel plant. Built at an approximate expenditure of Rs 1600 crore, the furnace has a useful volume of 4060 cubic metres. Mr Verma also inaugurated the new Slab Caster at the Steel Melting Shop-II of RSP, which can cast slabs of up to 2500 mm width.

With the start of the new state-of-the-art furnace, hot metal capacity at RSP will increase to 4.5 mtpa from its present capacity of 2 mtpa. With a daily hot metal production of 8000 tonnes per day, the furnace has an enhanced campaign life of 20 years, and is equipped with systems such as pulverized coal injection, cast house fume extraction, cast house slag granulation, high top pressure operation coupled with top gas recovery turbine, twin material bin bell-less top, waste heat recovery and conveyor belt charging. It incorporates level II automation and has twin flat cast house with four tap holes. The environment-friendly furnace ensures minimum emissions and recovers waste energy to the fullest; it also has a closed-loop cooling system resulting in almost zero water discharge.

The new slab caster set up at an approximate expenditure of Rs. 500 crore incorporates latest technologies and can cast slabs of width upto 2500 mm with thickness of 220 mm, 250 mm and 300 mm. This slab caster will supply slabs to the new 4.3 metre wide Plate Mill being installed as a part of RSP's modernisation and expansion plan.