Achieving an important milestone towards the completion of Steel Authority of India Ltd.'s (SAIL) modernization and expansion program, which is in concluding stage, SAIL's Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) has blown in the Blast Furnace (BF) No. 8 Mahamayasuccessfully. This is the first step towards commissioning of Mahamayawhich has a useful volume of 4060 cubic metre and capacity of producing 8030 tonnes of hot metal per day or and 2.8 million tonnes per annum.
With the new furnace on-stream, SAIL BSP's hot metal capacity will go up to 7.5 million tonnes per annum from the present production level of around 5 MT.BF No. 8 has various new generation technological features like Cast-House and Stock House Dedusting System, Top Pressure Recovery Turbine (TRT), Pulverised Coal Injection (PCI), Modern Heat Transmission System through Carbon Block, Ceramic Cup and SGI & Cu-staves and other state-of-the-art energy-efficient and pollution control equipment including Waste Heat Recovery system.
SAIL is substantially increasing its saleable steel capacity and is targeting to increase sales volume by 10% every year from the 14 MT in FY17. The addition of BSP's BF No.8 in SAIL's production capacity is a milestone and solid step to achieve that mark.
On this occasion, Chairman, SAIL, Shri PK Singh, said that, "The entire SAIL team is making tremendous effortsand results are quite visible also in all areas like production, revenues, cost of production, quality, our projects, our market share." SAIL is aiming to enrich its product basket with value added products which are majorly market demand oriented. Emphasizing the need to ramp up production from new facilities, he added that, " in the past few months, team BSP stepped up the pace of project work and they worked committedly towards finishing the project. I specially congratulate Team BSP for bringing this to reality. Team SAIL has always risen to the occasion whenever faced with challenges and the blowing in of this BF is the result of dedication and team work of SAIL Collective. "