OREANDA-NEWS. The Cherepovets Steel Mill, one of the world's largest integrated steel mills and part of the Russian Steel division of Severstal, one of the world's leading steel and steel-related mining companies, announces that it has completed a maintenance project to upgrade its No1 Converter. This marks the completion of a 3.4 billion rubles environmental improvement program which included the installation of equipment to trap fugitive emission from the Mill's No1, No2 and No3 converters. The program is expected to deliver an almost eightfold reduction in harmful atmospheric emissions at the Cherepovets Steel Mill.

Sergey Toropov, CEO of Severstal's Russian Steel division commented: “The upgrade of the No1 Converter, which involved replacing the housing of the melting unit and the mantle ring and installing an exhaust hood to trap fugitive emissions, was scheduled to take 44 days. I am pleased to report that we have managed to complete the work nearly eight days ahead of schedule, allowing us to produce an additional 56,765 tonnes of steel.”

The new system for capturing emissions, which includes, amongst other things, new bag filters, smoke exhausts, a compressor station, a package transformer and distribution substation, was installed at CherMK last year. In December 2013, the system was commissioned following maintenance on the No2 Converter. The No3 Converter was connected to the system in February 2014. The installation of an exhaust hood at the No1 Converter completes this major environmental program. The program is truly unique, as it was implemented without interrupting production.

Sergey Toropov continued: “The main elements of this major environmental program have pleasingly all been completed on schedule. Whilst this program is the largest environmental project in the history of the Cherepovets Steel Mill, its completion does not mean the end of our focus on environmental improvements and we will continue to undertake activities to further improve the environmental performance of our production assets.”

The major supplier for the process equipment for this program was Siemens VAI Metals Technologies.