Bruno Ferrante, chairman of Taranto-based Italian flat steel producer Ilva, has filed with the Court of Taranto a €400 million investment plan aimed at reducing the environmental impact of the Ilva steel complex. The covering of ore yards is one of the main projects which will be implemented by the company in order to avoid the definitive shutdown of its upstream plants.
Accordingly, Ilva has commissioned Luxemburg-based plantmaker Paul Wurth to design a covering system for its ore yards, which should reduce by 70-90 percent the dust carried by wind into the surrounding city of Taranto. Moreover, Ilva will reduce its average iron ore and coal stocks by 20 percent.
At its coke oven shop, Ilva is already restructuring its oven batteries Nos. 9 and 10, and from December this year it will stop also batteries Nos. 5 and 6 in order to rebuild them and reduce their polluting emissions in line with the levels of the best available technologies.
According to the schedule outlined by Ilva, in December the company will start works on its blast furnaces Nos. 1 and 2 replacing the old wet-type systems with modern stockhouse dry-type systems which utilize texile filters. The blast furnace No. 1 will also be equipped with a treatment system for the gases emitted by the slag sintering machine and the blast furnace will remain idle during the whole upgrade process.
Finally, the converter shop will be covered with a roof and equipped with a new dry-type waste gas filter which will have a throughput capacity of 3.2 million cubic meters per hour.