Russian steelmaker NLMK Group has announced that it has started construction and assembly works at energy infrastructure and gas treatment units at steelmaking shop No. 2 (BOF Shop) as part of a large-scale upgrade of blast furnace (BF) and basic oxygen furnace (BOF) operations at its Lipetsk site.
According to NLMK’s statement, these activities are part of a large-scale project to reconstruct the largest of NLMK’s two BOF shops, that will enable an increase in its productivity by 19 percent to 10 million mt per year of steel, and cut specific air emissions by 56 percent by 2020.
Konstantin Lagutin, NLMK Group vice president of investment projects, stated that this large-scale reconstruction project addresses a whole set of the group’s strategic objectives, including growth of production output, efficiency improvement, as well as a drastically reduced environmental footprint. NLMK is not only going to boost productivity of two of the shop’s three BOFs and radically cut emissions, it is also going to enable the use of BOF gases for captive energy generation, added Mr. Lagutin.
This large-scale project was launched in 2014, with the design of the gas cleaning system. NLMK plans to complete the entire reconstruction in 2020. The total cost of the project is estimated at RUB 17.2 billion.