High Productivity and High Pci Operation at ‘H’ Blast Furnace, Tata Steel – The Operating Experiences with Indian Raw Materials

Scarcity of metallurgical grade coal or coke is known to all the iron making units since long. Various attempts have been made to optimize the requirement of coal by developing alternative route for iron making, alternative methods to meet the thermal requirement of the blast furnace iron making process. Most popular amongst these developments has been the development of injection of low quality coal in the blast furnaces at the tuyere level. In order to optimize cost and improve productivity,Tata Steel has been practicing injection of coal in the blast furnaces at its Jamshedpur works since 1991. Under the growth plan, ‘H’blast furnace (capacity 2.5 MT) has been commissioned on 31st May’2008. It had achieved an average monthly productivity of 2.77T/Day/m3 and maximum daily productivity of 3.17 T/m3 (working volume) with average coal injection rate 150Kg/thm under Indian raw material conditions. This paper covers the operation experiences and technical considerations employed in H Blast Furnace to achieve the above performances