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Tata Steel Invests in Cooling at Port Talbot Steelworks

04/27/2011 - Tata Steel has invested £53 million at its Port Talbot works to introduce in the Basic Oxygen Steelmaking plant a new cooling system that will produce steam, allowing electricity to be generated. The investment reportedly will reduce its external power requirements by about 15%.

Tata Steel has invested £53 million at its Port Talbot works to introduce in the Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) plant a new cooling system that will produce steam, allowing electricity to be generated. The investment will reportedly reduce the company’s external power requirements by about 15%, or 10 MW of energy.
    
The project will replace the BOS plant’s existing off-gas water-cooling system with an evaporative system that will produce steam to be converted into electrical power through a turbine. Tata Steel claims the investment will improve the energy balance of the steel melt shop and the process safety of the plant. The decision to invest in the new cooling system was the result of an examination of best practice within the Tata Steel Group.
 
The main project work is scheduled to be carried out in the second half of next year, in parallel with the previously announced £185 million rebuilding of Port Talbot’s No. 4 blast furnace. The investment also follows the £60 million BOS plant Energy Recovery project, which was completed last May.
 
Karl-Ulrich Köhler, the MD and CEO of Tata Steel in Europe, said: “The UK Strip Products business reacted in determined fashion to the financial crisis and has earned the investments that Tata Steel has committed to it in recent months. Steel is a capital-intensive and highly competitive industry that requires long-term planning. It is vital that the steel industry in Europe and the UK is not faced with a regulatory environment that reduces its international competitiveness and makes similar investments in the future unviable.”
 
Jon Ferriman, Director of Tata Steel’s UK Strip Products business, said: “This project makes further advances towards our vision of becoming self-sufficient in energy, and also further improves our environmental performance. By equipping our BOS plant with a state-of-the-art evaporative cooling system, we will improve Port Talbot’s productivity and energy efficiency. We will also build on the ability to recycle and reuse process gases that our Energy Recovery plant brought us.”
 
The European operations of Tata Steel (formerly known as Corus) comprise Europe's second largest steel producer. With main steelmaking operations in the UK and the Netherlands, the company supplies steel and related services to the construction, automotive, packaging, material handling and other demanding markets worldwide. Tata Steel is one of the world’s top 10 steel producers. The combined group has an aggregate crude steel capacity of more than 28 million tonnes and approximately 80,000 employees across four continents.