SteelNews.com Article
NLMK Resumes Hot-Rolling Production Upgrades
Mar. 17, 2010 NLMK Steel resumed upgrading activities at Continuous Reheating Furnace No.3 used for bringing billets to forging temperature before hot-rolling. The capacity of the furnace is 320 tonnes of slab per hour.
The project was launched in 2007 but was suspended due to the economic crisis.
NLMK says that the new furnace being constructed to replace the old one will ensure highly uniform slab heating and very accurate strip parameters on further rolling. Advanced technologies will help cut energy consumption by 50% and reduce NO and CO emissions by 27%, the company claims.
Foundation works have already been completed. The project is being implemented in collaboration with the Belgium CMI as part of the second stage of NLMK’s Technical Upgrade Program. Its total value exceeds RUR 2 billion.
The new furnace is expected to be commissioned in 2011, increasing NLMK’s hot-rolling capacities by 200,000 tonnes per year of a variety of steel grades.
Continuous Reheating Furnace No.3 will be the third unit of its kind to be upgraded at NLMK’s main production site in Lipetsk. (Furnace No.5 was commissioned in 2004; Furnace No.4 in 2007.)
Hot-rolled sheet and coil consumers include the construction, shipbuilding, automotive, and pipe-production industries, as well as NLMK’s own cold-rolling facilities such as its transformer steel plant in Yekaterinburg.