NLMK updates reheating furnace at its hot-rolling shop in Lipetsk

NLMK Group’s Lipetsk site, has started installation of the reheating furnace equipment in its hot-rolling shop. A new walking-beam furnace will replace a previous-generation pusher-type furnace.

The new furnace will add 110 k t per year (+2%) to the hot-rolling mill's output, improve product quality thanks to a more sophisticated technology for charging slabs into the rolling mill, reduce energy consumption by 50% and cut this section's emissions by half.

Investment in the project will total RUB 4.4 bn. The production capacity of the new furnace is 320 t per hour (2.25 m t per year).

Sergey Filatov
, Managing Director, NLMK, said:

“The construction of the reheating furnace is one of the key projects of NLMK's investment programme. The equipment upgrade is aimed, among other things, at the development of the sales portfolio through product quality improvement. The start-up of the unit will not only increase NLMK's rolled products output, but also enable a complete transition to a high performance resource-saving technology intended for heating slabs before rolling”.
The furnace update is a brownfield project, that is, it is being implemented while the hot-rolling mill is operational without any capacity reduction. The construction began in July 2018. At present, foundation work has already been completed at the construction site, slab transport mechanisms have been installed, and the furnace shell is now being installed. It is planned to complete the upgrade in September 2019 and bring the unit into operation as early as in October.

Throughout 2004-2011 new generation furnaces were installed at the hot-rolling mill. This new furnace will be the fourth in a row; with its launch, the last obsolete reheating furnace will be decommissioned.

For the first time in NLMK Group, the full cycle of BIM (Building Information Modeling) technology was used for the furnace design and the organization of construction and assembly works. This technology enabled the company to create a digital twin of the future unit and, already at the design stage, mimic the construction process, eliminate possible errors in advance and optimize the volumes and schedule of construction works.