OREANDA-NEWS. The Cherepovets Steel Mill, one of the world’s largest integrated steel plants and part of the Russian Steel Division of OAO Severstal, one of the world’s leading steel and steel-related mining companies, today commissioned its new No.7 coke-oven battery (KB-7) following a reconstruction project which has received investment of about 4.5 billion rubles.

This project to reconstruct KB-7 is part of a wider investment program aimed at developing company’s assets to meet its coke production targets.

The new battery replaces an old unit, which had been deconstructed to its foundation plate. The battery’s 10 coke machines were replaced, while environmental facilities and other supporting infrastructure for the new battery were designed and constructed from scratch.

Alexander Grubman, Chief Executive of Severstal’s Russian Steel Division, commented: “The new unit will produce 700,000 tonnes of coke per year, 100,000 tonnes more than the old battery could. With the new battery on stream, Cherepovets Steel Mill will be able to increase its in-house coke production by 15% a year”.

To help mitigate the new battery’s environmental impact, KB-7 features a dust-free coke pushing unit (three out of the Cherepovets Steel Mill’s eight coke-oven batteries have now been equipped with these units) as well as a new gas removal system (HPLA gasholder) that will enable smoke-free charging of coal in the battery’s sintering furnace chambers.

These, alongside a host of other leading-edge environmental solutions, will help reduce atmospheric dust emissions at the new KB-7 by approximately 90%, or about 600 tonnes per year.

34 employees will work at KB-7 which features an automated process control system and highly efficient safety technologies.

OOO Severstal-Project, a company within OAO Severstal, was the designer and project manager for the KB-7 project. The detailed design documentation was prepared by the GIPROKOKS Design Institute, a Ukrainian company, while ZAO Trest Koksokhimmontazh, a Moscow-based company, was the contractor for the project.

Suppliers of the major project equipment included: GOSA FOM (Serbia); ОАО Boiler Equipment Plant (Russia); ОАО Siblitmash (Russia); ZАО Kondor-Eko (Russia); ООО Dneprotekhservis (Ukraine) and PAO Slavtyazhmash (Ukraine). Some of the machinery and major equipment, including tie bars and coke transportation cars, were supplied by the Severstal Russian Division’s machine-building company, OOO SSM-Tyazhmash.

A separate investment project to renovate the Cherepovets Steel Mill’s No.2 Shop for Chemical Products Processing was completed at the same time as KB-7, enabling the commissioning of KB-7 using solely cleaned coke oven gas.