India's Tata Steel Commissions 2.5 Million-Ton 'H' Blast Furnace

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Researched By Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Tata Steel (Mumbai), India's largest private player in the steel industry, has successfully commissioned the "H" blast furnace, India's largest blast furnace with a capacity of 2.5 million tons per year. The blast furnace, which was formally blown in on May 31 at Tata Steel Works in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, signifies a milestone achievement in the company's ambitious plans to ramp up the plant's manufacturing capacity from the current 5 million tons per year to 7 million tons per year in Phase I, and subsequently to 10 million tons per year in Phase II by December 2010.

The furnace has a daily production capacity of more than 7,200 tons of hot metal with a coal-injection rate of 160 kilograms per ton of hot metal and a coke rate of 380 kilograms per ton of hot metal. It is equipped with four tapholes and two flat cast houses. Electric blowers have been fitted to supply the cold blast. An expansion turbine will be used to recover electrical energy from the blast furnace gas. Provisions have been made to recover waste heat from the stove's exhaust to save on fuel consumption. The slag generated from the furnace will be further used in a granulated form to manufacture cement.

The 3,800-cubic-meter blast furnace has been designed, supplied, constructed and commissioned by a consortium composed of Larsen & Toubro Limited (OTC:LTOUF) (Mumbai), PW Luxembourg, PW India and PW Italia. The project, which was started in June 2006, was completed within 25 months, which is reportedly the shortest time taken globally for the construction and commissioning of such a large furnace. The project involved 80,000 cubic meters of civil works, 28,000 tons of structural work, 22,000 tons of refractory work, 20,000 tons of equipment erection, 1,500 kilometers of electrical cabling and 1.5 kilometers of rail track development. Because of space constraints, the plant was designed within an area of 63 acres. Most of the equipment was procured from overseas original equipment manufacturers while the Growth Shop of Tata Steel (Jamshedpur), a division of Tata Steel Limited (BOM:500470) (Mumbai), undertook in-house fabrication of major pipelines and shells.

As part of its expansion plans for the steel plant at Jamshedpur, Tata Steel will undertake the development of new facilities that include a 6 million-ton-per-year iron ore pellet plant, raw material handling units, a new lime calcination plant, and two single-strand thin slab casters with a capacity of 1.2 million tons per year each and 2.4 million-ton-per-year hot rolling facilities. It will also begin an augmentation of mines; an expansion of Hooghly Metcoke and Power Company Limited (Calcutta, West Bengal), a joint venture of Tata Steel and West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, from 1.2 million tons per year to 1.6 million tons per year; and the development of utilities, such as power, in addition to improvements in logistics and infrastructure. Tata Steel will also take on three greenfield projects in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa to achieve a combined capacity addition of 23 million tons per year. It also plans to build steel-manufacturing units in Bangladesh, Iran and Vietnam.

The company has joined hands with Nippon Steel Corporation (TYO:5401) (Tokyo, Japan), Pohang Iron and Steel Company (SEO:005490) ) (Pohang, Republic of Korea) and JFE Holdings Incorporated (TYO:5411) (Tokyo, Japan) to collaborate with Vale (NYSE:RIO) (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) to expand the Carborough Downs Coal Mine, an underground mine near Moranbah, Central Queensland, Australia, in which Vale owns an 80% stake and Tata Steel owns a 5% stake. Tata Steel will benefit from the expansion, which will ensure 4.9 million tons of annual production of run of mine coal to yield 3.7 million tons of pulverized coal injection coal and coking coal from mid-2009. This will help Tata Steel in securing raw material for its global steel businesses. The company has a total crude steel production capacity of 28.1 million tons per year.

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