- Jindal Steel Power Ltd (JSPL) fully trusts in Hot DRI transport solution from Germany.
After successful installations in Korea, Saudi-Arabia and Australia, AUMUND have now received from MIDREX Technologies an order to deliver the hot DRI transport system for the direct reduction plant of Jindal Steel Power Ltd. in India. The AUMUND conveyor type BZB-H-I, developed for conveying hot direct reduced iron, is equipped with special buckets plus thermal insulation and inert gas system. The two conveyors to be installed at the Jindal Steel Plant with a centre distance of 150 m will be designed for 250 t/h capacity each.
All conveyor components will be specifically optimized for this application and will ensure the efficient and reliable transport of the pellets at a temperature of 800 degree Celsius. According to the company; at present AUMUND is the only manufacturer that can successfully provide a mechanical conveying system for transporting hot DRI under an inert gas atmosphere. Since the end of the 90s, the direct reduction process has gained increasing prominence in the production of raw iron from iron ore without using the conventional blast furnace. The close proximity of raw iron production and steel works offers various economic benefits: The direct reduction process generates raw iron with a high metallization in solid form as bulk material (fines/pellets) or in compacted form as crushed plates (HCI), the hot DRI can be processed immediately in the steel works. The expanding application of the Direct Reduction process worldwide to produce raw iron has established AUMUND Fördertechnik GmbH as an important provider of special hot material conveying solutions in this field. The design challenge for the transport of the hot DRI is to both minimise the temperature loss, using an insulated enclosure, and the re-oxidation of the material, by maintaining the conveyed material stream within an inert gas atmosphere.. This material, comprising highly pure iron, tends to re-oxidise at high temperatures where oxygen is present and will combust. Type and temperature of the product, the age of the DRI produced, the geometrical shape and the geological origin of the ore are the factors which influence this combustion process. During recent years, AUMUND Fördertechnik has developed an optimized transport system to satisfy these demands for clients such as; Mittal Steel Point Lisas (Trinidad), Posco (Korea), Hadeed (Saudi-Arabia) and ESISCO (Egypt) being four production locations where AUMUND conveyors for the DRI transport are used successfully. In the plant to be installed in India, the transport system is integrated into the planning of the direct reduction process and the subsequent electric arc furnace (EAF). To avoid unnecessary interfaces, the entire material flow path was designed early in the project stage to eliminate adverse transfer points for maximum efficiency and minimum maintenance. At JSPL, the organization of the material transport will ensure that at no time can the material come into contact with atmospheric oxygen at any point. The AUMUND inert gas system to be supplied together with the pan conveyors with deep buckets will not only guarantee the exclusion of oxygen around the conveyed material, but also the least possible loss of temperature. |
