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NLMK Commissions High-Capacity Ladle Furnace
03/24/2010 - Novolipetsk Steel commissions a high-capacity four million tonne/year ladle furnace in cooperation with Siemens VAI (Austria) as part of the second stage of its Technical Upgrade Program.
Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK) has commissioned a high-capacity four million tonne/year ladle furnace that will enable the company to produce new steel grades for automotive, white goods and electrical engineering applications.
The company will use the new high-tech ladle furnace to homogenize each melt’s temperature and chemical composition prior to continuous casting into slabs. The new equipment will help the company to achieve ultra-low sulfur content in steel (up to 0.001%), while maintaining alloy additions and temperature parameters strictly within preset limits.
NLMK is implementing the project in cooperation with Siemens VAI (Austria) as part of the second stage of its Technical Upgrade Program. The new equipment features fully automated process control as well as up-to-date fume extraction and gas cleaning to ensure excellent environmental performance. The company said the new ladle furnace will also help to reduce steel treatment costs and improve quality.
NLMK also plans to commission an additional four million tonnes/year ladle furnace this year at its main production site in Lipetsk, for a total of eight million tonnes/year of new capacity. The company plans to allocate over RUR 3 bln to the construction of these two facilities, and estimates that the additional capacity will lead to the addition of about 60 new jobs covering operation and maintenance.
The company also intends to commission two more ladle furnaces in 2010-2011 with an overall capacity of four million tonnes/year. When complete, all of the new facilities will process a total of about 12 million tonnes of steel per year.
