30 October 2012
Blast Furnace No. 3 of Yenakiieve Steel, Metinvest Group, the most advanced furnace in Ukraine, tapped the 1st Mt of HM!
Nearly a year ago Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works blew in blast furnace No.3. As of October 29th, 2012 BF-3 hot metal production rate amounted to 1 Mt. The advanced complex was constructed under the Technical Development Strategy meant for Metinvest Group Iron and Steel Works.
The first year of BF-3 commercial operation proved that investments, totally over USD 220M, allocated for this project, demonstrate successful and effective results. Blast Furnace Shop process engineers successfully mastered the new BF charging method with the application of the first BLT system, installed in Ukraine, which leads to valuable coke consumption saving by 5% and appropriately to BF performance improvement by the same rate.
Environmental soundness of BF-3 complex is insured by the blast furnace gas cleaning and dedusting systems. Gas cleaning system allows not only to treat BF gas from the contaminants by 99.9%, but also to use it further as a fuel for the Works production units instead of natural gas. The monitoring and control of process activity and machines operation are performed by the up-to-date Process Control System of “Siemens VAI” (Austria). It is a modern integrated control network, based on the data comprised over 5 thousand test parameters. Currently, for the first time in Ukraine, the Level-4 of Process Control Automation System has been introduced at BF-3, and this is a fundamentally new feature in Ukrainian Blast Furnace production.
“During last six years our Company sees the large-scale reconstruction and production capacities upgrading, - pointed out Alexander Podkorytov, General Director of PJSC Yenakiieve Steel. – Advanced blast furnaces for Yenakiieve Steel are the only first stage of our Works Upgrading Policy. The next step is construction of PCI unit, new ASU and state-of-the-art sinter plant”.