SAIL Chairman C.S. Verma
inaugurated the second ladle
furnace of Steel Melting Shop-II
of Rourkela Steel Plant during his
maiden visit to Rourkela, Odisha,
on August 23. RSP Managing
Director S.N. Singh and Director
(Personnel), SAIL, B.B. Singh,
were present on the occasion
besides other senior SAIL officials
and members of the
Rourkela collective.
The ladle furnace is part of a
197.66-crore scheme for simultaneous
blowing in basic oxygen
furnace (BOF) convertors of
SMS-II of Rourkela Steel Plant.
Total investments envisaged for
different facilities as a part of
RSP modernisation and expansion
is
11,812 crore.
The scheme was conceived
under SAIL's current modernisation
and expansion plan to take the
steel utility's hot metal production capacity to a level of
23.5 million tonnes by 2012-13.
The 150-tonne ladle furnace, procured from Danieli
India Ltd, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Italy's Danieli
Group, the global leader in building plant and equipment
for the steel industry, is meant for secondary
refining of steel for finer chemistry control and maintenance
of ideal temperature for continuous casting.
Steel produced by BOF gets
treated in the ladle furnace
before being sent to slab casters
to produce slabs of various
sizes. With the addition of one
ladle furnace, SMS-II of
Rourkela Steel Plant now has
two ladle furnaces. This will
enhance the production
capacity of SMS-II from existing
1.68 million tpa to 1.85
million tpa of liquid steel,
thereby increasing production
of slabs by 0.17 million tpa.
The addition of one ladle furnace
will ensure uninterrupted
production of liquid steel from
SMS-II, resulting in better time
management and resource
optimisation. Oxygen required
for simultaneous blowing of
both the converters will be met
by Oxygen Plant-III, which will be
commissioned shortly. The new
ladle furnace is in line with
Rourkela Steel Plant's expansion
plan of adding a third converter in SMS-II.
Other units and facilities to come up under
Rourkela's growth plan include 7-metre tall COB
No.6 (1x67 ovens), Sinter Plant-3 (1x360 m2),
Blast Furnace-5 (4,060m3 useful volume), 3rd
BOF (150 tonnes), LF, RH-OB and third single
strand slab caster with balancing facilities, and a
4.3-metre wide plate mill of 1 million tpa.