The Business Bytes
TBB BUREAU
ROURKELA, SEPT 11, 2021
An in-house technological intervention by a team of employees of Continuous Casting Shop-I (CCM-1), the casting shop of Steel Melting Shop-I, has helped Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) accrue huge savings and optimize operational efficiency. The team has successfully developed and installed a Propane Gas fuelled Sub-Entry Nozzle (SEN) Preheating Assembly at Tundish Car of CCM-I.
Notably, the new fuel efficient system replaced the existing preheating system based on mixed gas and air combustion. The propane-based new preheating system has reduced maintenance and down time considerably, thereby enhancing productivity and performance of the unit. Besides, the techno-economics have also further improved with the use of cleaner and high calorific value based propane gas.
It is noteworthy that, in the continuous casting process, molten steel from the Tundish is teemed into the water cooled mould through SEN. The SEN is preheated up to a temperature of about 450 degree centigrade in order to prevent cracking and breaking of the SEN due to thermal shocks. Earlier, mixed gas and air were being used together for the preheating purpose which was taking 2-3 hours to attain the desired temperature. Besides, the use of mixed gas as fuel in the preheating was requiring frequent maintenance of the burners, valves, hoses, pipelines and headers due to chokage by condensate and high preheating time.
Celestine Tirkey, GM, SMS-1 and AV Pradeep, GM (Mechanical), SMS-1 took up the challenge of commissioning the propane gas fuelled new system under the guidance of RK Patra, CGM, SMS-1. The innovative project was successfully executed using in-house resources by team CCM-1 (Mechanical) under the supervision of SN Rout, Senior Manager, JK Mohapatra, Manager, P Suchit Rao and JD Mohapatra both Senior Technicians, CCM-I (Mechanical).
The fuel efficient new system was commissioned in the presence of Pankaj Kumar, the then ED (Works), RSP and other senior Officers of the plant.
