Two-day international congress on iron making begins

Jamshedpur, Feb 05 (UNI) Indian Institute of Metals(IIM) president and Tata Steel Managing Director B Muthuraman today said the blast furnace determined the competitiveness of a steel plant in terms of both cost and quality.

Mr Muthuraman said during the past five to six years the steel industry had been growing in excess of five to six per cent, compared to around one per cent growth during 1970-2000, such growth was taking place in countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia with a high population and that the dominant way of adding steel capacity for several years to come would remain the blast furnace route.

He said while export of high grade iron ore must stop at the earliest if the Indian steel industry has to survive in the long run, use of lean ore (low grade iron ore) must be brought to use at the earliest to prolong the overall life of the reserves.

Also, with depleting iron ore reserves in the country, large capacity blast furnaces would become the obvious choice, he said.

In his keynote address, T K Roy, Tata chair professor at the department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Bengal Engineering Science University said, '' People into iron-making must accept the challenge (of depleting reserves) and should bring in the domain of steel making use of lean iron ore.'' T Mukherjee, Deputy Managing Director (Steel), Tata Steel, said the steelmaker was the only in the country to have brought down the slag content in its blast furnaces to ''less than 260 kg consistently from 520 kg a few years ago'' not merely by washing local coal to contain low ash content (13 per cent) but ''by understanding the characteristics of slag''.

Dr Mukherjee said the world was seeing a resurgence in iron making through the blast furnace route from the year 2000 and several countries, including India, were putting up new blast furnaces.

Organised by the Indian Institute of Metals(IIM), Jamshedpur chapter and Tata Steel, the two-day iron-making congress is being attended by 150 delegates, including producers, research institutes, mini-blast furnace operators, blast furnace designers and manufacturers from various countries, including China, Austria, Australia, Luxembourg, UK, France, Japan and Germany.

All major Indian steelmakers are also participating at the meet said to be an opportunity to learn the latest ideas in iron-making at cost-effective ways.

UNI