NLMK Group launches new green energy facility

NLMK Group, Russia’s leading manufacturer of high value added steel products, has successfully completed hot testing and launched operation of a new top-pressure recovery turbine (TRT), a green energy-generating facility, at its Lipetsk production site.

Top-pressure recovery turbines generate energy using excess blast furnace gas pressure. Blast furnace gas produced during the smelting of hot metal in blast furnaces at Novolipetsk is also channeled to a heat power plant and a recovery cogeneration plant for captive energy generation.

An additional TRT is currently under construction with launch scheduled in 2016. The total design capacity of the two turbines that will form the TRT complex is 28 MW. The TRT facility will use gas produced by blast furnaces No.6 and No.7, with the project set to increase the plant’s energy self-sufficiency from 54% to 56%. The TRT will therefore reduce the amount of energy that must be purchased for the plant by 200 million kWh per year, which accounts for approximately 6% of total purchased energy.

Investment in the two TRTs is estimated at 1.9 billion rubles; resulting in a payback period of about 2.5 years.

NLMK Vice President for Energy Alexander Starchenko said: ‘This is a new green energy facility: fuel is not burnt to generate energy; instead, we use secondary resources. As well as bringing our energy costs down by 6%, this project will also improve our environmental footprint.’

Over the last three years, NLMK Group has implemented a number of large investment projects aimed at increasing the energy efficiency of operations and increasing the share of electric energy generated through usage of by-products. Another example is the new 150 MW recovery cogeneration plant installed at the Lipetsk site, which was constructed along with a modern electric air-blowing station installed to meet the needs of blast furnaces 6 and 7. NLMK also built a modern air separation unit that produces 34,000 cubic meters of oxygen per hour.

VIZ-Steel (Yekaterinburg) launched an air separation unit to produce nitrogen, which has a capacity of 8,000 cubic meters per hour.