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Metinvest Commissions Blast Furnace at Yenakiieve Steel
12/07/2011 - Metinvest has commissioned a modern blast furnace at its Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works subsidiary, adding 1.2 million tonnes of capacity to the plant’s annual hot metal production.
Metinvest has commissioned a modern blast furnace at its Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works subsidiary. The new furnace will add 1.2 million tonnes of capacity to the plant’s annual hot metal production, which will eventually total 3 million tonnes of pig iron per year. The new furnace (referred to as BF-3) was installed as part of Metinvest Group’s strategy to technologically develop its steelmaking assets. Construction of the furnace required an investment of more than US $220 million.
The new BF-3 applies a number of state-of-the-art technologies and utilizes the latest industrial control systems. For example, the furnace’s bell-less charging unit, made by Paul Wurth (Luxemburg), reportedly reduces coke consumption by 5% while simultaneously increasing the blast furnace’s productivity by 5%. In addition, a new refractory lining applied to the blast furnace hearth walls is designed to quadruple the service life of the furnace, providing 15 years of maintenance-free operation.
For the first time in Ukraine, according to Metinvest, a blast furnace has been equipped with Paul Wurth’s gas cleaning unit, which helps to improve the plant’s cleanliness and environmental performance. The gas cleaning unit not only purifies the blast furnace’s gas, removing 99.9% of the harmful contaminants, but also uses it as a fuel for the plant’s production facilities, providing a substitute for natural gas.
Technological process control at BF-3 is based on a modern Siemens VAI (Austria) industrial control system. This is a fundamentally new integrated control network based on processing more than 5000 validation parameters.
The industrial control system now also encompasses the heat and power plant steam and air blowing station, which was modernized along with the BF-3 construction project. At the Heat and Power Plant, a turbine and compressor unit (Turbine Air Blower no. 6) made by CKD Nove Energo (Czech Republic) and a recycled water supply unit with two ventilated cooling towers and German-made pumping equipment were installed.
Metinvest is an international vertically integrated steel and mining group of companies.
