Displaying items by tag: Upgrade

Australia: Adbri subsidiary Cockburn Cement has approved a US$152m upgrade to its Kwinana grinding plant in Western Australia that includes a slag feed system. It says the investment will consolidate the cement operations at its Kwinana site. At present clinker is transported by truck from the Kwinana Bulk Terminal to cement mills at both the Kwinana grinding plant and the company’s integrated plant at Munster. It will increase its production capacity to 1.5Mt/yr from 1.1Mt/yr at present. The project is expected to save the company US$15m/yr due to better energy, transport and maintenance efficiency when the plant is commissioned by mid-2023. The producer will fund the investment through existing debt facilities.

The upgrade project includes: a bulk materials conveyor linking the Kwinana Bulk Terminal (KBT) facility to a new 110,000t clinker storage shed, incorporating an automated reclaim system, to eliminate road transport and minimise clinker handling using mobile equipment; a slag feed system that will handle granulated blast furnace slag and additives such as gypsum and limestone; a ball mill circuit with the installation of two new cement mills capable of grinding slag and clinker; and a new 21,000t finished product storage, truck loading and weighbridge infrastructure for storage and despatch.

Netherlands: India-based Tata Steel has announced a planned total investment of Euro300m in environmental upgrades to its IJmuiden, Noord Holland plant. The upgrades include a Euro150m nitrous oxides control (DeNO_x) plant at its pellet plant and a Euro50m odour, particulate emissions reduction modernisation of a coke and gas plant and projects to dust from converter slag processing. The steel producer says that these measures, called Roadmap+ will help the foundry to ‘exceed environmental laws.’

European regional chief executive officer (CEO) Henrik Adam said, "Tata Steel is taking additional action to build on its Roadmap 2030 plan with the announcement today of Roadmap+, which will enhance the environment in and around the IJmuiden plant. We are absolutely committed to sustainability as a strategic priority across the company, of which these measures are the latest example.”

India: JSW Cement has revised its planned expansion to its 14Mt/yr total installed capacity to 39Mt/yr before 1 January 2023, an increase of 5Mt/yr compared to its initial target of 34Mt/yr by 2020. The figure includes JSW’s 54% subsidiary Shiva Cement’s new 1Mt/yr integrated and 1Mt/yr grinding plant, valued at a total of US$112m. Parth Jindal, JSW Cement managing director, said that the figure had been revised upward because Shiva Cement had become self-sufficient in clinker production, freeing the group’s east Indian cement production from ‘volatile import costs.’

Economic Times has reported that Shiva Cement is set to bring its limestone reserves to 100Mt with the acquisition of the Khatkurbahal mine. The company sources its granulated blast furnace slag from the Odisha steel industry. Production of JSW Cement’s flagship product, JSW Portland Slag Cement (PSC), releases CO2 at a rate of 325kg/Mt compared to between 760kg/Mt and 800kg/Mt for typical Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC).

Finland/Germany: Finnsementti’s second grinding unit at its Raahe Slag Plant will be a Pfeiffer MVR 1800 C-4. The unit consists of four rollers with a total slag grinding capacity of 0.2Mt/yr. During maintenance, it is able to keep working at 60% capacity. Gebr. Pfeiffer has stated that the plant will be commissioned in the third quarter of 2020.

Finland: Finnsementti has installed a second mill at its Raahe grinding plant, increasing its total capacity by 100% to 1.0Mt/yr. Esmerk has reported that the mill will grind only slag, which will replace other clinker ingredients in its cement to a net carbon footprint reduction of 40,000Mt/yr. The company has stated that ‘a significant part’ of its Euro12m investment in the upgrade will go towards dosing equipment and increasing storage capacity, with a special emphasis on maintaining a circular economy and reaching its environmental goals by reducing the net CO₂ emissions of its Raahe plant.

UK: Fairport Engineering has revealed details on its work on Hanson’s 1Mt/yr Purfleet ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) grinding plant. The plant includes two closed circuit ball mills and a vertical roller mill. Fairport Engineering worked on a project to improve the raw material intake facilities at the unit to replace a storage bunker with a new feed hopper and ramp. In the next phase the bunker is likely to be removed and replaced with a second feeding system.

The new system includes a reinforced concrete access ramp that will allow front-end loaders to deposit raw material into a 30t capacity Hardox lined hopper before being metered, at up to 200t/hr, by a vibrating feeder, onto an exiting conveyor belt that feeds the GGBS plant. The entire installation was completed in six weeks.

Netherlands: Ecocem Benelux has inaugurated a new 5000t export silo at its Moerdijk ground granulated blastfurnace slag (GGBS) plant. The new silo has been built at the waterfront in Moerdijk and rests on 65 piles sunk to a depth of up to 50m. The system operates via a screw extractor that conveys the GGBS to the centre of the bulk silo, where screws and a bucket elevator carry it to the new 150m³ day-silo. Both trucks and ships can be directly loaded from the silo: trucks on the weighing bridge situated under the silo and ships via a pneumatic transport installation with a maximum capacity of 250t/hr.

Ecocem Benelux is a subsidiary of Ireland’s Ecocem Materials. Ecocem Benelux supplies GGBS in bulk to the Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg (Benelux) market for both concrete and mortars. The facility also exports to the Swedish market. Since opening in 2002 the plant has doubled its production capacity to 0.65Mt/yr.

Turkey: Erdemir Group has ordered new INBA slag granulations systems as part of an order for two new blast furnaces (BF) from Luxembourg’s Paul Wurth for its Ereğli and Iskenderun integrated steel plants. At both sites a new furnace will replace an older production unit. The new blast furnaces are scheduled for blow-in in March 2021 and May 2021 respectively. No value for the order has been disclosed.

At Ereğli Erdemir’s new BF2 will have a hearth diameter of 10m, 24 tuyeres and two tapholes. It will produce 5000t/day of hot metal from an inner volume of 2188m³. At Isdemir the new BF1 will be sized at 12.5m in the hearth and 3587m³ of inner volume; it will be fitted with 32 tuyeres and four tapholes and will produce 7900t/day, which further increases the hot metal capacity at this site.

Paul Wurth will execute both projects on an EP basis including the supply of technological key items and related supervision of erection and commissioning. The orders include basic engineering of the blast furnaces with profile, cooling and lining concepts as well as the design of the stockhouses, top gas cleaning plants, slag granulation plants and BF cooling units.

For both furnaces, Paul Wurth will supply Bell Less Top charging systems and bleeder valves, refractories for the hot blast mains and bustle pipes, tuyere stocks with tuyere phenomena detection system (TPDS), technological and critical items for the top gas cleaning plants (consisting of axial cyclones, annular gap scrubbers) as well as for in total three INBA slag granulations systems. Extensive sets of TMT probes and process recorders include, inter alia, 3D TopScanburden surface profile meters and SOMA acoustic top gas temperature measurement. Under the same contracts, TMT will also supply fully hydraulic taphole machinery for equipping all the six tapholes in total.

Bangladesh: Confidence Cement plans to install a slag dryer unit at its plant in Madambibirhat, Bhatiary near Chittagong. The upgrade is intended to allow for uninterrupted production at its Unit-2 and Unit-3 lines, according to the Financial Express newspaper. The company also intends to demolish its 600t/day Unit-1 line due to high electricity costs and overall running costs.Confidence Cement to install slag dryer unit

Poland: Primetals Technologies has received a provisional acceptance certificate (PAC) from ArcelorMittal Poland for the replacement of the second LD (Basic Oxygen Furnace) converter at the Dąbrowa Górnicza steel works. The converter entered service in February 2018. It follows a previous project by Primetals Technologies to replace a converter at the site in 2016.

As in the case of Converter #1, Primetals Technologies supplied the vessel and the trunnion ring, including the Vaicon Link 2.0 suspension, for Converter #3. The converter bearings and the enclosure have also been renewed. The order included also removal of the existing vessel and assembly and installation of the new equipment. This had been handled by ZKS Ferrum, the Polish partner in the consortium.

ArcelorMittal Poland is the leading steel producer in Poland, operating six production plants in the south of the country. Its range of products includes profiles, rails, fittings for the construction, transport and mining industries, as well as flat products for the automotive industry and domestic appliances.