Russia-based leading global iron ore and hot briquetted iron producer Metalloinvest has announced that it has launched the upgraded blast furnace (BF) No. 3 at its subsidiary Ural Steel.
The project, with the investment amounting to RUB 3.9 billion ($53.3 million), has contributed to an eight percent increase in pig iron output at the BF in question to more than 1 million mt per year, SteelOrbis has learned.
Following the launch of the upgraded blast furnace No. 3, the company is said to have completed a large-scale project for the modernization of the overall blast furnace production at Ural Steel. “The upgrade of the production complex, consisting of BF No. 2 and BF No. 3, will enable the company to produce around two million mt of pig iron per year. Besides that, due to the modernization, we have increased the environmental friendliness of production. In particular, the consumption of coke was reduced by five percent by new furnaces, with the emissions into the atmosphere and emissions of greenhouse gases having been reduced concurrently,” a managing director at Ural Steel, Ildar Iskakov, commented.