The Russian company Mechel OAO announced the commissioning of out-of-furnace steel processing equipment in the first stage of the arc-furnace melting shop upgrade at the company’s plant in Chelyabinsk Metallurgical plant in Russia.
The equipment includes the LF No.2 for out-of-furnace steel processing and a vacuum tank degasser for molten metal degassing. Thus, at the arc-furnace melting shop a full complex of modern high-technology equipment for out-of-furnace steel processing is commenced. The steel produced at the out-of-furnace processing unit is casted into billets at continuous-casting machine.
The new LF-2 allows significant improvement of the casted steel’s quality. The vacuum degasser with the appropriate infrastructure will allow CMP to extend a range of steel grades manufactured at the arc-furnace melting shop, save costs at the processing stage and improve the quality of finished rolled products. The annual designed capacity of LP-2 is as high as 1.2 million metric tons, and the vacuum degasser is expected to process up to 650,000 metric tons of steel per year.
The project has been implemented within the reconstruction of the arc-furnace melting shop. In addition to the out-of-furnace steel processing equipment, the project includes reconstruction of the continuous casting machine, which is nearly completed and a large complex of environmental protection measures.
"The arc-furnace melting shop #6 is being re-equipped in order to increase output of concasted slabs up to 1.2 million metric tons per year, which are used for production of high quality flat products. Also, the project's implementation would allow us to further enlarge the range of steel grades and products manufactured by CMP,” says Andrei Deineko, CEO of Mechel Steel Management.
“Additionally, introduction of the new complex would allow us to increase overall production efficiency of our steel segment due to decrease in consumption of raw materials and power. The equipment of the arc-furnace melting shop #6 matches the best examples of the world stainless steel producing plants. The new equipment ensures increasing quality of our products and would allow us to increase output of plates and rolls of corrosion-resistant steel grades after reconstruction of our rolling facilities to compete with the leading European producers," Deineko adds.