NLMK Group, an international steelmaking company with operations in Russia, the US, and the European Union, is upgrading hot-rolled steel production at the Lipetsk site in western Russia. The plan is to install a new walking-beam reheating furnace to streamline the slab heating process. The new furnace will replace the outdated pusher-type furnaces currently operational at the facility.
The new furnace (No.2) with a capacity of 320 tonnes/hour (about 2.25 million tonnes per year) will boost the productivity of Mill 2000, increase the quality of steel products due to using a more advanced technology for feeding slabs to the mill, enable a significant reduction in energy consumption and minimize environmental impact.
The Hot Rolling Shop currently operates 5 reheating furnaces in turn with a total maximum capacity of 1,500 tonnes of slabs per hour (in 2016, 6.24 million tonnes of hot-rolled steel was produced). Three of them are already equipped with walking beams; the two remaining pusher-type furnaces will be replaced by the new furnace.
“The new furnace will enable a 110 ktpa increase in hot-strip mill productivity, and an improvement in the quality of HRC by eliminating surface defects in the process of preheating slabs that can occur in pusher-type furnaces. Specific natural gas consumption will decrease by 49%. Consumption of energy required for subsequent rolling will reduce by 20%, and air emissions will be almost halved,” said Konstantin Lagutin, NLMK Group Vice President for Investment Projects.
Construction and assembly activities are scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2017 with an estimated launch date late in 2019. During maintenance, slabs for the hot-strip mill will be preheated by four of the five existing reheating furnaces. The upgrade of furnace No. 2 will have no impact on the production program. Main process equipment will be supplied by Tenova (Italy), with NLMK Engineering acting as the chief designer.
