Modernised facilities

IISCO Steel Plant has taken up a massive plan to expand its annual production capacity to about 2.5 million tonnes by installation of a greenfield state-of-the-art integrated steel plant. The modernised facilities include:

UNIT	FACILITY	ANNUAL PROD. CAPACITY
Coke Oven Battery	7 m tall x 74 ovens	0.78 MT gross coke
Sinter Plant	2 x 204 m2	3.8 MT gross sinter
Blast Furnace	1 x 4060 m3	2.7 MT hot metal
Basic Oxygen Furnace	3 x 150 tonne	2.5 MT crude steel
Billet Caster	2 x 6 strand	1.67 MT
Beam Blank Caster	1 x 4 strand	0.8 MT
Universal Section Mill	-	0.6 MT
Bar Mill	-	0.75 MT
Wire Rod Mill	-	0.5 MT

Coke Oven

One coke oven complex equipped with a 7-metre tall battery, having 74 ovens with coke dry cooling plant and matching byproduct plant is a part of the modernised facilities. The plant uses dry cooling by inert gases, instead of conventional water quenching to produce the best quality coke.

Sinter Plant

Two sinter machines with a grate area of 204 metre square to produce sinter up to 80% of total iron bearing burden for blast furnace. The super-fluxed sinter avoids addition of raw flux in blast furnace thus resulting in improvement of energy efficiency and productivity of blast furnace and reduction in coke rate. Other major facilities in the sinter plant include base blending for input materials, flux and fuel crushing facilities, lime dozing facility.

Blast Furnace

The blast furnace with around 4,060 metre cube of useful volume is one of its kind in the country. Equipped with pulverized coal injection technology it drastically brings down the coke rate to 385 kg per tonne of hot metal. It also provides using of high blast temperature up to 1250˚C, oxygen enrichment, and high top pressure of in order to increase blast furnace productivity and to reduce the coke rate.

Basic Oxygen Furnace

Three 150-tonne capacity basic oxygen furnaces to produce around 2.55 MT of liquid steel. These BOFs have latest features like combined blowing, slag splashing, fully computerized operation and process control system, slag arresting facilities. Using scrap, iron ore and DRI as coolant it eliminates waste and enables recycling. Almost all types of steel can be produced with suitable downstream secondary refining units and flexibility in heat size.

Secondary refining (Ladle Furnace)

Two 150-tonne capacity ladle furnace for secondary refining process. These LFs allow the BOFs to be used primarily as melting units. Homogenization of steel composition and steel temperature, desulphurisation, final decarburisation and degassing can be efficiently carried out in the secondary refining vessel.

RH Vacuum Degassing Unit

The vacuum degassing capacity of 150 tonnes will help to produce liquid steel with low level of inclusions and good homogeneity and value-added low alloy grades of steel, particularly in Cr/Ni/Mo bearing alloys. The process also provides controlled alloying and mixing to produce a variety of alloys.

Casting of liquid steel

The continuous casting process includes shrouding of liquid steel stream from ladle to tundish and from tundish to mould to avoid re oxidation, automatic steel level control in mould through radioactive isotopes and computerised cooling of the stand in secondary cooling zone.

Billet Caster & Beam Blank-cum-Bloom Caster

Keeping in view the requirement of billets, blooms and beam blanks in rolling mills, two 6-strand billet casters and a 4-strand bloom-cum-beam blank caster with state-of-art- technology are being installed. The use of beam blanks in Universal Section Mill leads to considerable improvement in overall yield and energy consumption.

Rolling Mills

One bar mill and one wire rod mill for production of 0.75 MT of high quality bars and 0.5 MT of wire rods per year. Another Universal Section Mill to produce 0.6 MT of universal section products per year. The net rolling hour available is 5,000 hrs/yr and the yield from cast blooms/beams blanks to universal section products is 96.5%. The net rolling hour available for bar mill and wire rod mill is 5,500hrs/yr and yield from cast billets to bars and wire rods is 96.5%.

Advance logistics

Minimum and uninterrupted flow of materials has been given due importance while developing the layout of the modern plant. Mimic control system for hot metal movement on railway track has been envisaged under logistics head. The plant is provided with latest version of IP-communication server-based telephone exchange to provide state-of-art communication infrastructure.