The country’s largest blast furnace was lit up at the IISCO unit of the Steel Authority of India Ltd., on Monday, kick-starting the process of integrated commissioning of the 2.5-million tonne per annum steel project.
A SAIL release said that the furnace had a volume of 4,160 cubic metres and had now become the biggest operating blast furnace in India. Earlier, SAIL’s Rourkela Steel Plant had the largest capacity.
The countdown for the start-up began in mid-November, and the start-up is seen as the culmination of a massive modernisation and expansion work at Burnpur. Although it is being labelled as an expansion project, it is actually a Greenfield plant, which has come up on 953 acre in Burnpur almost adjacent to where a blast furnace was started in 1922. It is still operational. “With this, IISCO Steel Plant is firmly on course to regain its glorious past” SAIL Chairman C. S. Verma said immediately after the ‘blowing-in’.
IISCO, was a SAIL subsidiary till 2005 when it was merged with SAIL in 2005.
Its modernisation project cost is now being estimated at over Rs. 17,000 crore and comprises 32 major and 47 auxiliary packages. Most of the major upstream and downstream units of the new steel plant such as coke oven battery, sinter plant, basic oxygen furnaces continuous casters and wire rod mill have already commenced operations and the products are being ‘sold’ to other SAIL units.
