Displaying items by tag: legal

Italy: Cemitaly has been allowed to use slag and ash in cement production at its Taranto plant following an investigation, according to the Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper. The former Cementir unit was investigated in 2017 as part of an illegal waste probe that examined whether the Taranto plant purchased ‘illegal’ by-products from Enel and the ILVA steel plant to produce cement.

Germany: Loesche says it is continuing its research and development of a process to create a steel slag suitable for cement production following a legal dispute.

The engineering company has worked with the FA Finger-Institut für Baustoffkunde (FIB) at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar on the thermally reductive modification of steel slags for recycling iron and manufacturing ‘steelworks clinker.’ It has developed two procedures for thermally reductive conditioning of BOF (Basic Oxygen Furnace) slag that have been registered for a patent, which largely differ in the respective cooling process for the remaining molten metal. The individual stages of the procedure have already been tried and tested on an industrial scale. Loesche’s partner for the entire procedure is Primetals Technologies based in Linz, Austria, which has industrial-scale plants for reduction and fast cooling based on patented procedures in its product range. The remaining iron (approximately 8 - 10%) that is still in the ‘steelwork clinker’ can then be separated in a Loesche mill. The separation procedure for this, which has also been patented by Loesche, has been in operation for approximately six years to recycle stainless steel from stainless steel slags in a recycling plant in Belgium.

However, following smelting trials conducted with the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) in 2011, Loesche faced a lawsuit regarding the patents for its procedures. The legal uncertainty that this created led to the suspension of further development and implementation of the two procedures for more than three years. The legal dispute was resolved in December 2017. The second conditioning procedure – the fast cooling – was assigned as the sole property of Loesche. A third of the ownership of the first conditioning procedure - slow cooling – was conceded to the BAM, represented by the German government.

Loesche now plans to implement the second procedure into industrial practice.

India: Union officials at the Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) have asked for an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into an alleged fixing of the price of blast furnace granulated slag (BFGS). The RSP claims that it couldn’t sell its slag by electronic auction due to limited storage space, lack of rail transport logistics and low market price of BFGS, according to the New Indian Express newspaper. However, sources quoted by the newspaper say that the plant had sufficient storage space and that at least three times as much railway cargo capacity was available as the RSP has indicated. It is estimated that it undersold its product by at least US$15.5m. Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram has also accused the steelmaker of favouring local cement producer OCL India in the scheme.