After a complete rebuild with modernisation, size increase and capacity expansion, No. 1 Blast Furnace at JSW Steel’s Vijayanagar Works, Toranagallu, Karnataka, India has been blown in on 8 February 2016 at 06:15 a.m. This was achieved after a very short phase of cold and hot commissioning which started 12 days before with a first furnace leak test followed by pressure test, furnace drying, heating and first filling. A smooth and safe blow-in and ramp-up allowed achieving 83% of nominal production level within the first week of operation. The target production has been surpassed for a first time on the 9 March 2016.

Paul Wurth’s contractual obligations covered design, engineering, procurement and supply of equipment for the entirely new Blast Furnace and all its main auxiliary plants, basic engineering for the erection and its planning as well as supervision of erection and commissioning for the major plant units.

The new furnace features a modern profile, all-staves thin-wall cooling system, extensive instrumentation and process recording devices, a parallel-hopper Bell Less Top® with a MIDI type gearbox, a completely modernised casthouse with new and displaced equipment, adjusted runner design, access ramps and platforms as well as de-dusting facilities. The existing auxiliary plants have been upgraded for the new production parameters: improvements and capacity increasing measures have been applied to the top gas cleaning, slag granulation, water treatment and PCI plants. A new hot stoves plant with waste gas heat recovery system has been installed.

JSW´s new No. 1 BF replaces its predecessor which has been in operation for one campaign from 2004 till August 2015. It is supported on the old but reinforced foundations and fits into the existing square tower.

The furnace has now an inner volume of volume of 2,307 m³ (instead of 1,250 m³), an increased hearth diameter (enlarged from 8 to 10.4 m) and increased number of hot blast tuyeres (from 18 to 28). The daily hot metal rate is 5,250 t for a total yearly iron production of about 1.7 million t, some 89% more than before the modernisation. These figures represent one of the largest capacity increases ever seen from one single blast furnace rebuild.

Paul Wurth S.A., Luxembourg