Steel secretary G Mohan Kumar inaugurates upgraded blast furnace at Vizag Steel Plant

KOLKATA: Steel secretary G Mohan Kumar inaugurated an upgraded blast furnace -1, 'Godavari', by blowing in of the furnace at the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant on Wednesday. The repairs included revamping and up gradation of the furnace by incorporating the latest blast furnace technologies. The total cost of modernization including all auxiliaries is estimated at Rs 600 crore.
As part of the upgradation, the volume of the furnace is being increased from 3,200 to 3,800 cubic metres by introducing copper cooling plates and latest generation cast iron cooling plates in the place of existing normal cast iron cooling plates. The inner volume of the furnace is also being increased by about 600 cubic metre by using the latest refractories.

With state of art of furnace control systems with new additions and up-gradations, the techno-economic parameters will be more favorable resulting in low reduced cost of hot metal production apart from increasing production from the furnace by 0.5 million tonne from the present level of 2 million tonne.

This is one of steel plant (VSP) that had to cope with various adverse conditions and even without captive raw material sources, maintaining profitability and made significant steps in the direction of sustainability, Sri Mohan Kumar said at the event.

The steel secretary also inaugurated the Sinter Heat Recovery Power Plant (SHRPP) of 20.6 MW under Green Aid Plan of Japan (NEDO Project) built at a cost of Rs 300 crore. The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) has, in cooperation with the Ministry of Steel, government of India, completed a demonstration project on a Japanese waste heat recovery system at the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant.

P Madhusudan, CMD, RINL, Umesh Chandra, Director (Operations), TK Chand, Director (Commercial), PC Mohapatra, Director (Projects), GBS Prasad, Director (Personnel), B Siddhartha Kumar, IFS, CVO, Sri Shosaku Umezawa, Representative Director, JP Steel Plantech CO, Japan, Fumio Ueda, Executive Director, NEDO and union leaders D Adinarayana, N Rama Rao, Mantri Rajsekhar, Ayodyaram, SEA president & general secretary Madhava Rao, Srinivas, representatives of SC&ST association were also present at the event.