NLMK Group announced savings of EUR 6M in 2014 through the use of pulverized coal injection (PCI) technology at two blast furnaces at its Novolipetsk production site in Lipetsk.
PCI technology involves the co-injection of natural gas and fine thermal coal particles into the blast furnace resulting in lower natural gas and coke consumption. NLMK began implementing the resource-saving PCI technology at the Lipetsk site in 2013. To date, the plant has successfully completed guarantee tests and moved on to commercial operation of PCI systems at two blast furnaces: No.5 (with a capacity of 3MTPA) and No.4 (with a capacity of 2MTPA). Even during the PCI testing period, coke consumption at these blast furnaces decreased by 10% and natural gas consumption decreased by 40%.
Sergey Filatov, Novolipetsk managing director, said: “More than a third of Novolipetsk blast furnaces have been fitted with PCI systems. We continue to work on enhancing the efficiency and cutting the cost of pig iron production. With this in mind, we plan to equip almost all Novolipetsk blast furnaces (which produce over 12MTPA of pig iron) with PCI systems.”
