Japan: Steel slag production fell by 2.1% year-on-year to 36.7Mt in the financial year that ended in March 2018, according to Japan Metal Daily. This was attributed to increasing levels of slag recycling rates with nearly all of the blast furnace slag being reused.

UK: HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary Hanson is supplying its Regen GGBS (ground granulated blastfurnace slag) cement replacement for a project to build a new tidal barrier across the New Cut River in Ipswich. The Euro24m project is being managed by the Environment Agency to protect properties at risk of flooding.

The work is being carried out by VBA, a joint venture between VolkerStevin, Boskalis Westminster and Atkins, and is due to be fully operational by September 2018.

India: Engineering company Paul Wurth has released details on a new blast furnace it supplied for the Steel Authority of India’s (SAIL) Bhilai Steel Plant in Chhattisgarh. It supplied, with Larsen & Toubro, a 2.8Mt/yr blast furnace for the site that was commissioned in February 2018. The unit was the eighth furnace at the plant following seven mid-size furnaces of Soviet design built from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Slag processing equipment for the furnace included an Inba slag granulation unit with a cooling tower. Other general equipment supplied for the project included: copper and cast iron staves; a 2H Bell Less Top charging syste
m with pressure equalizing valves and bleeders; cardan-type tuyere stocks; a hot stoves plant of three internal combustion chamber stoves with waste gas heat recovery and process valves of Paul Wurth design; pulverized coal injection based on dense-phase conveying with three injection hoppers and 70t/hr capacity; a top gas cleaning plant with axial cyclone; annular gap scrubber and downstream energy recovery turbine. Paul Wurth also supplied its BFXpert Level 2 automation system to allow and control of the plant operation.

Paul Wurth noted that a particular challenge of the project was to fit the new blast furnace into a brownfield building site. In particular, the layouts of the main charging conveyor, the racks for utilities pipes and cables and the railway tracks had to be finalised with ‘unconventional’ solutions.

Blast Furnace 8 at Bhilai is the largest blast furnace put into operation by Paul Wurth in India so far. It has an inner volume of 4060m³, a hearth diameter of 13.4m, four tapholes and 36 tuyeres. The nominal production is 8030t/day of hot metal.

Indonesia: Krakatau Semen Indonesia (KSI) is targeting strategic infrastructure projects for its slag cement products. The company’s ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) no longer requires special permission to be used, according to the Antara news agency. The joint venture between Krakatau Steel and Semen Indonesia operates a 0.69Mt/yr slag grinding plant at Cilegon in Banten.