Reduce Steel Industry Waste Explain Kassem Ajami
Kassem Ajami Says the impact of human activities on nature has led to a change in the climatic condition of our world, due to this, widespread natural disasters in different parts of the world take place every year. The continuous efforts by man to use that energy for industrial activities make them use forest resources to generate energy. One of these climatic are highly affected by the wastage generated at the time of Steel production in industries.
The activities in the integrated steel plant could be divided into three different groups. The first group involves
(i) iron making process, comprising sintering and agglomeration,
(ii) coke making and
(iii) blast furnace operations
Steelmaking which includes all the operations from primary steelmaking through secondary steelmaking to continuous casting constitutes the second group. According to Kassem Ajami, the rolling & finishing process such as shearing, pickling, coating, and other finishing operations comes in the third group. At these stages, a big number of wastes are generated. These wastes have a wide-ranging impact on the environment. So, the minimization of wastes through the integrated waste management system has gained special popularity in the present times. Through this, the scope to reduce waste of all kinds in the steel sector increased. It has also been concluded that through the introduction of new processing technologies, wastes can be reduced drastically and whatever waste is generated can be recycled in the process of a stream or converted into value-added products.
Kassem Ajami said producing steel in an integrated steel plant involves several operations starting from the preparation of naturally occurring raw materials like iron ore and coal and flux stones in the production of hot metal in blast furnaces, converting hot metal into steel, and the subsequent rolling of steel into a finished product in the rolling mills. Other activities including power generation, production of refractoriness are also performed in varying degrees in the steelworks. A large quantity of waste is generated in view of the above activities. These wastes have a wide-ranging impact on the environment. So, effective and efficient waste management is an important need for the steel industry. Effective waste management is likely to achieve:
- Creation of pollution less work environment for both inside and outside plant
- High operational and, techno economics indices
- Generating additional wealth and profit for the company
- Conformance to the government regulations and the social commitments for the protection of the environment
- Energy saving
So, it can be safely argued that probably the greatest protection for minimization of waste generation and affecting cost savings rely on better waste management.
WASTE MINIMIZATION
For efficient &effective waste minimization multipronged approach must be applied, which can be described as:
(i) By improving the operational techniques in existing plants,
(ii) By the introduction of emerging technologies in iron and steel making and processing technologies in existing plants.
(iii) By improving the operational practice
Coal and Coked
According to Kassem Ajami, partial briquette blending of coal (PBBC)was first launched in Japan and has now been developed in China, South Africa, South Korea, Russia and recently been introduced in the Steel Plant of Bhilai. These Steel Plant blends (30% imported coal) had shown that this technology has the potential of improving the M, C value of the coke by nearly 2 points thereby, minimizing the production of waste fine at the time of handling, transportation, and charging in blast furnaces. For indigenous coal, the potential is even higher by nearly 4 points. Recently the stamp charging technology has been installed at Tata Steel which besides other benefits will also improve the quality yield and minimization of waste production. Group-wise crushing technology, which is also expected to improve coke strength has been envisaged and there is also a hope that it will minimize waste generation of fines too. Coke dry quenching is also another new technology, which minimizes water consumption and reduces the volume of wastewater which is resulted from the coke ovens. Also, dry quenching does improve the general environment in the coke oven area.
By doing this, we will not only make the environment healthier but also reduces the man-hours of working and improve the climatic conditions for us and the other species.
Blogs related to the steel industry read more