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The Development of Esfahan Steel Plant

  

Different Phases of the Development of Esfahan Steel Plant:

Phase 1: The first phase of Steel Plant first project

 

Phase 2: The first phase of development

 

Phase 3: The balance project

 

Phase 1: The first phase of Steel Plant project, the executive affairs of structuring of different units of the factory was started since 1346. With constructing the work areas of coking, agglomeration and Blast furnace, number 1, the operation of the complex started at the first half of January of 1350 with producing cast iron.

 

Phase2: The first phase of Steel Plant development started by producing steel making productions and rolls engineering in January of 1972. The executive and structural affairs of the development project to get the capacity of 1,900,000 tons steel per year by constructing Blast Furnace, number 2, and the development of the different sections of agglomeration, coking, steel making, rolling and etc, and the structural operations of cast iron complex was finished in 1978. However, due to some demonstrated problems in designing stable Russian casting machines, the steel making was the production main cramp and pathway for which the complete usage of the steel complex was performed up to the nominal capacity in 1987 by purchasing two modern casting machines from Italy and its installation from 1985. Although during the war, in Iron-Steel Plant as well as other industries, the procedure of achieving the targets was not idealistic, but after the war ended, the plant could research the border of 2 million ton that meant over the installed capacity of the equipments by employing its facilities. Then, 1995 was declared as the reconstruction opening, after a series of studies on a comprehensive reconstruction depending on the available abilities of the professional forces with about a quarter century of experience. Moreover, they attempted to employ the reconstruction capacity with the least cost and time wasting, while increasing the units production capacities as well as the production diversity, and improving their quality. The result is achieving the production capacity of 2.2 million ton per year.

 

Phase 3: The balance project was planned to match the different sections of the production line of Esfahan Iron-Steel Plant, to supply the charge of Saba Steel Complex, and thus to increase the annual production capacity of 1.9 million ton per year to 3.4 – 3.6 million ton, and steel sections to the border of 2.7 million ton per year in Esfahan Iron-Steel Plant after some primitive studies.

 

The project includes five parts as follows:

1. Blast furnace: (Constructing Blast furnace, number 3 with 2000 cubic meters volume and the capacity of 1.4 million ton melted cast iron per year).
2. Agglomeration: (Constructing agglomeration, number 4 with 204 square meters anneal value and the agglomeration capacity of 2.4 million ton per year).
3. Coking: (Producing coking battery, number 3 with the capacity of 900 thousand tones coke per year).
4. Power Plant: (Making two units of steam power plant, each with the capacity of 55 MW).
5. Side units: (Developing raw materials and material transfer system, reconstructing and developing utilizator cauldrons and related gas purification system, central power point development, air compressor room development, physical and chemical purification room development and constructing central pumping room, the development of fluids transporting, electricity, firefighting, telecommunication, and all energetic and communicational networks of the above four units. The primitive research related to the balance project was performed in March 1998. Based on the estimated costs through primitive studies, the required credit as providing the credit through finance in economic council was confirmed, and thereafter, the offering implementing responsibility was assigned to Fulad Technique Engineering International Company as the project consultant in February 1998.

 

The Balance Project Necessities:

1. According to the current production line chart and the production capacity table of different units, there is not the balance between the factory production capacity of cast iron and steel (2.1 million ton melted cast iron per year in Blast furnace in comparison with 2.4 million ton per year in steel making and 3.1 million ton per year in casting).
2. The rolls and steel making capacity can be increased to 2.7 million ton and 3 million ton, respectively per year through partial reconstruct and repair. The required cast iron to achieve this goal will be 2.9 million ton per year.

 

Environment:

The undertaken bioenvironmental activities include constructing and developing the public garden (up to 1800 hectare), purifying used water from waste and pollutants in different parts of the plant, implementing the aspiration system to remove dust from the production process in Blast Furnace, improving and modernization of the convertor gas purification system in the form of the balance project, performing the industrial hygiene activities and controlling dust and pollutants measure in the plant.

 

Agglomeration and oxidizing parts: the main task of the agglomeration part is producing agglomerate with good technical conditions to be consumed in Blast Furnace. This part includes raw material store, bunkers factory of the prepared materials, and the anneal factory. Due to the uniformity of the better recovery and chemical analysis, agglomerate consuming rather than ironstone direct consuming, increases Blast furnaceoutput up to 25% – 30% and reduces coke consuming up to 20% too.

 

Raw Materials Storage:

Raw material store has three main asks as follows:

– Receiving the raw materials with suitable quality and quantity, and storing them.

– Matching the materials.

– Sending the materials to consuming units.

 

All consuming materials in production line except coal, which is directly stored in silos of coking section got into this store from the mines by trucks. This unit is in charge for storing and supplying raw materials for various units. The storage of raw materials has 15 platforms with the capacity of 70-80 thousand tons each. The factory of the prepared material bunkers which its task is receiving, preparing and sending the required raw materials, with suitable charging form to produce agglomerate with expectable technical conditions to anneal factory. The factory has 2 rows of bunkers, each has 19 number of 90 cubic meter bunkers to receive and send.

 

Anneal Factory:

This factory is in charge to receive the mixture of raw materials (ironstone, dolomite, annealed calcium carbonate, coke, limestone, manganese stone, oxidized roll crusts, Blast Furnace, etc), to anneal and turn it into agglomerate with the required conditions of Blast Furnace. This factory has three 75 square meter anneal machines of Dwight Lloyd.

 

The Section of Coke and Chemicals Production:

The main task of the section of coke and chemicals production is producing coke as energy source and main regenerative in Blast Furnace. This section includes the factories of coal, coke, recycling of materials, benzol refining, sulfuric acid, energy and biochemistry.

 

Coal Factory:

Coal factory is in charge to take coal from mine storage, and provide adequate charge for coking batteries. The factory consists of stockpiling and taking equipments of coal, crusher, mixer and 40 numbers of silos to store coal with the capacity of 100 thousand tons.

 

Coke Factory:

This factory task is producing coke from coal and sending it to the parts agglomeration and Blast Furnace. Coke factory consists of two batteries, one with 58 cells and another with seventy-two 27/3 cubic meter cells. The factory receives its required coal from coal factory, and then charges about 22 ton coals from coal tower by charging machine. Then, the process of turning coal into coke is performed during 15 to 19 hours.

 

Recycling Factory:

Recycling factory task is the primitive refining of produced coke gas from the batteries to be used in production process. In this factory, ammonium sulfate, raw benzol and sodium fenulate is resulted from coke gas, and the gas is sent to sulfuric acid production factory for the final refinery.

 

Sulfuric Acid Factory:

This factory task is separating sulfurate hydrogen gas from coke gas, and producing sulfuric acid through chemical responses by vanadium penta-oxide catalyzer, and also the final refinery of coke gas. The refined coke gas is used in coking batteries, factory power plant, roll furnaces, incombustible productions and agglomeration part.

 

Energy and Biochemistry Factory:

This factory task is providing consuming water and steam of different factories, and purifying industrial sewages from phenol through biochemical method.

 

Blast furnace Section:

The main target of Blast furnace is producing melted cast iron to apply in steel making section. This section includes:

– Blast furnace of main factory

– Cast iron infusion factory

– Slag granulating factory

– Bunkers pot and installation repairing factory

 

Blast furnace of main factory:

Cast iron production in factory is performed through Blast furnace numbers 1 & 2. Blast furnace number 1 has 1033 cubic meters volume with the annual capacity of 760 thousand tons. Blast furnace number 2 has 2000 cubic meters volume with the annual capacity of 1.4 million tons. During cast iron production in Blast Furnace, the raw materials (ironstone, agglomerate, pellet, coke and melting aids) are enriched from furnace opening, and the enriched air and oxygen with other combustion aids (natural oil & fuel oil) are blown from above the furnace. The blown air causes the coke to be burnt and makes sufficient temperature and reclaiming gas to reclaim melting ironstone and agglomerate. Melted materials are gathered in furnace and are outpoured alternatively. After separating cast iron and slag, the outpoured melting is sent out separately in pots carrying slag and cast iron through a special gutter, which is prepared with a suitable incombustible. Then, slag pots are sent to slag granulating factory by locomotive and carried to steel making by cast iron pots.

 

Cast iron factory:

The factory task is producing pig. The factory has two cast iron infusion machines, each with the capacity of 162 ton per hour. The produced cast iron in the factory can be sold to different industries, and if necessary, it is used as cold charge in convertors.

 

The task of this factory is preparing the portage of the cast iron pots. Bunkers installation, materials storage, providing and storing the required raw materials of Blast furnaces of the factory tasks. The capacity of bunkers of Blast furnaces number 1 & 2 is 2150 and 6149 cubic meters, respectively.

However, during three recent centuries, due to the accelerated developments in technology field of steel production in industrial countries and increasing need to the steel products, Iran is placed among the importers of metallic products. Establishing an iron steel plant, which is considered as the mother of the industries has been discussed since Qajar period as a national ideal, and it’s always been encountered with variety of difficulties such as domestic and foreign political problems and financial limitations. So, establishing Iron Steel Plant was agreed through the structure of technical and economical corporation protocol between Iran and The Former Soviet Union governments, and an agreement was signed that the parliament approved in January 13^th of 1965. One of the principles of the agreement was Soviet’s assist to establish Iron Steel Plant in Iran. On this basis, Iran Iron Steel Plant National Corporation concluded a contract with Soviet’s Firm of Export Tiajhprom to supply the requirement plan and equipments for the plant, and to prepare iron ore, coal and limestone mines.

 

Soviet’s specialists considering the limitations of the financial resources and raw materials, particularly, coal known stores, specified the plant capacity in the first phase, 550 thousand tons steel per year that it was agreed. Subsequently, Iranian and Russian specialists evaluated Esfahan suburb from the criteria of earth’s layers stability, location qualification for the earthquake, water supply, electrical energy, raw materials, and communicational lines, technical, economical and social parameters. As a result of their studies, Tabas plain located 45 kilometers of Esfahan Southwest was ensured and assessed suitable. The excessive operations of constructing the structure of different units of the plant was started from 1967, and exploiting the plant with cast iron production was begun, by making coking, agglomeration and blast furnace, number 1 during the first half of January 1971. Establishing steel making section and roll engineering in January 1972 also began the production of steel products with the capacity of 550 thousand tons per year.

 

Consequently, in 1972, the executive and constructional operations of the development project to achieve the capacity of 1/900/000 tons steel per year was started by establishing blast furnace, number 2, and developing different parts of agglomeration, coking, steel making, rolling etc, and the constructional operations of cast iron complex was ended in 1978. But, due to the existing problems in designing the Russian stable casting machines, steel making was as the production strait and limitation, and in relation with it, the establishment of two modern casting machines from Italy was begun, and in 1980 the complete exploiting of steel complex was carried on up to the nominal capacity. Although during the imposed war, in Iron Steel Plant as well as other industries, proceeding of achieving the goals of the development project was not as expected, but after the war ended, using its facilities, the plant could get the production up to 2/000/000 tons i.e. more than the capacity of settled equipments. Then, after the performed studies, the plant plan a comprehensive and extensive reconstruction fulfillment, and depending on available abilities in professional forces, it was attempted, in addition to the reconstruction capacity with the least time waste, the production capacity of the units was started to be increased, the production variation was added and their quality was improved. After the performed research and studies and by the aim of balancing the production capacity of the plant different units, the performance of the plant balance project is in being done.