With the coming of the warm spring days we can say that we have been able to overcome one of the stages of the crisis. Winter, luckily, did not bring us heavy and long-lasting frosts. This allowed to save power carriers, which have started to occupy an important part in the production cost of finished products. This is typical for all domestic metallurgical enterprises. For example, the share of gas at Mariupol Metallurgical Works named after Illyich in February amounted to 15-16% in the general production expenditure but a year ago this index was in the limits 8-10%.
At our Works the main consumer of natural gas is the open-hearth furnace shop. Due to the crisis transfer to converters will not take place in the near future. Hence the open-hearth furnace shop workers will have to work for a long time under the pressure of public ecological organizations, which have to fulfill assignments with required quality. They have to continuously search for means of reducing power and resource expenditures to support competitiveness of Zaporozhye metal. These tasks are, frankly speaking, difficult. First of all, because the search for economy reserves has been going on for a long time. And then it is impossible to save on everything. A careful approach is needed.
This was a matter of consideration at the Works before. Already since 2005 to reduce the consumption of natural gas in the open-hearth furnace shop introduction of new jet-niche burners on fuel consuming aggregates of the open-hearth furnace shop started. That is why it would not be out of place to mention that when replacing the burners on two mixers it was possible to reduce the consumption of gas on the mixer from 239 to 70-90 m3/hour, keeping the set temperature of hot metal and the workspace of the aggregate, and reduce the formation of skull build-up on the nose of the mixer.
On the twin-bath steel melting aggregate, when replacing the old roof gas-oxygen burners for jet-niche burners it was possible to reduce the consumption of fuel for the steel making technology from 10.3 to 4.7 kg/t. There is one more positive point here: oxygen is not delivered to the burner, which allows to additionally save 1500 m3/hour. This is economy caused by life.
New burners have been additionally installed on the furnace roof too, which made it possible to redistribute the heat along the whole length of the bath. Due to this it has become possible to reduce the consumption of fuel for the technological process from 71.5-89.1 kg/t up to 65.2-73.4 kg/t. Economy reserves were searched for everywhere where there was power consumption. For example, a huge job was done to replace the outdated stands for drying steel pouring ladles. As a result 6 new stands, equipped with heat insulating covers together with the jet-niche burners were put into operation. Consumption of natural gas for drying steel pouring ladles reduced from 420-450 up to 100-150 m3/hour. In this case the drying duration reduced from 14-18 hours up to 8-12 hours. Correspondingly the introduction of jet-niche burners on the stands for drying steel tapping runners of open-hearth furnaces and twin-baths allowed to reduce the consumption of natural gas for drying from 160-250 up to 10-15 m3/hour keeping the drying duration unchangeable.
A lot of strength and means were spent on these innovations in the shop. Today the result can already be seen.
Today the management of the shop assigns concrete tasks on reduction of the prime cost of products. For example, reduction of pig iron consumption along with the increase of scrap consumption within reasonable limits, of course. Such expediency should always dominate in the questions of economy and sparingness. Even so, including the usage of power resources. The usage of jet-niche burners on the furnaces is one of the main points in reduction of expenditures. It’s a million profits, i.e. to be more precise, it is economy, but that is practically the same thing.
In March the usage of slag-broken stone instead of limestone resulted in the following: a ton of the product will be cheaper by 75.15 UAH. Last month scarfing of slabs started again which will also give a considerable economic effect. It is planned to replace the consumption of iron ore by scale from the cold rolling shops. Hundreds of thousands of UAH will be saved by the replacement of lime by limestone for technological needs. Reduction of magnesite powder per 1kg/t less than the norm, application of scale and handling of the furnaces is expected. Only due to these measures is it planned in the shop to receive economy (when fulfilling the plan) at an amount exceeding 4 mln UAH.
Let’s hope that what is wished will come true. It should be mentioned that the main factor of realizing all the worked out programs is a human being, his professionalism, feeling of responsibility and skill to work in a team. According to last year’s results the most consolidated team was the team of steel makers No.4, headed by the shift-in-charge Andrey Grigoryevich Gotovkin. The workers worked with minimum rejected products. However they produced 27.69 thousand tons of steel exceeding the plan. The steel makers understand quite well that their salary depends not only on qualitative heats, general profit but the credit of the Works, particularly in such a challenging time, which everyone is experiencing.
On the first unit of furnaces the same team is working with minimum losses. The collective headed by foreman Alexander G. Yevtushenko has over fulfilled the annual plan by more than 16 thousand tons. In general, though the team is the fourth in number but according to its results it is the leader. This is not only honour but responsibility too.