A £23 million programme of improvements at Tata Steel’s blast furnaces will reduce the site’s carbon footprint by about 160,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.
The two Port Talbot furnaces, which currently produce around 3.6million tonnes of liquid iron each year, are powered by high pressure ‘hot blast’ air that is superheated to temperatures of more than 1,100°C.
Recycled on-site process gases are used to heat the air in seven refractory-brick-lined ‘stoves’, before it is injected into the furnaces. Each stove is around 45m high by 8m across.
The stoves’ burners use primarily blast furnace gas, enriched with some coke oven gas and natural gas. At good operating levels, the stoves will produce over 200,000m3 of hot blast air every hour at a pressure of around 3 bar or 44 pounds per square inch (about the same as a car tyre)
Project Manager Andrew McGregor, who is in charge of the improvement programme, said, “Stoves are absolutely critical to the running of our blast furnaces. Any loss of efficiency in heating the air means we either have to use more gas than is optimum, or we have to replace that lost energy by using more metallurgical coke to chemically reduce the iron ore inside the furnaces.”
The £23 million programme of work in three of the seven stoves will upgrade the burners that generate heat, with two new best available technology units being installed. Many of the refractory bricks that store heat and make hot blast air, are also being replaced. The work is being carried out while the remaining operational stoves are in use.
Andrew added, “This programme of activity will make a significant difference to our carbon footprint, our energy costs and our operational stability and efficiency.”
