May 2 2012
Siemens VAI Metals Technologies has received an order for a pulverized coal injection plant (PCI) from Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI) UK. The plant will be constructed for the SSI blast furnace in Redcar, Northeast England, and is scheduled to come into operation in the latter part of 2012.
SSI UK's blast furnace in Redcar, Great Britain. Siemens will install a PCI plant there with a capacity of up to 235 kilograms of pulverized coal per ton of hot metal. Copyright: SSI UK
The injection of pulverized coal will reduce the coke consumption of the blast furnace, which, in turn, will reduce both expenditure on raw materials and energy consumption. The value of the order lies in the double-digit million euro range. The blast furnace had been shutdown at the beginning of 2010, and Siemens had already received other orders from SSI to bring it back into operation.
Siemens will be responsible for design and supply, as well as supervision of the installation and commissioning of the PCI plant for the SSI blast furnace in Redcar, Teesside. The plant will be able to inject up to 235 kilograms of pulverized coal into the blast furnace for each ton of hot metal produced. Before injection, the coal will be dried and ground by a hot gas swept roller mill. This will be rated to produce 120 tons of pulverized coal per hour, making it one of the world's most highly productive coal mills used with a blast furnace. A pneumatic dispensing system will inject precise amounts of pulverized coal into the blast furnace tuyeres. The injection rate can be varied according to need from between 30 to 235 kilograms of pulverized coal per ton of hot metal.
The new PCI plant will enable SSI to replace some of the coking coal it uses by cheaper, non-coking coal. This will significantly reduce both the cost of raw materials and the specific energy consumption. The total energy consumption will be further reduced by utilizing the offgases from the hot-blast stove in the drying and grinding plant.
With a hearth diameter of 14 meters and a nominal capacity of over 10,000 tons of hot metal per day, the SSI blast furnace in Redcar is one of the largest in the world. The furnace, which was shut down by the previous owner in February 2010, was upgraded by SSI, and was blown-in in mid-April.
SSI UK is the British subsidiary company of the Thai steelmaker, Sahaviriya Steel Industries Public Company Limited (SSI). SSI is one of the largest producers of sheet metal in Southeast Asia with a hot-rolling capacity of around four million tons per annum. In future, the slabs for the rolling mills will be supplied from the British plant in Redcar.
Further information about solutions for steel works, rolling mills and processing lines is available at: http://www.siemens.com/metals