The Slagservice Company (part of the MMK Group) has completed the largest environmental project in its history – the construction of an anhydrous cooling site for blast furnace slag. The new technology will completely eliminate the release of hydrogen sulfide, as well as halve dust emissions into the atmosphere. The cost of the project, implemented within the framework of MMK's strategic initiative "Clean City", amounted to about 3 billion rubles.
During the production of pig iron, slag is formed in the blast furnace, the temperature of which reaches 1400 degrees Celsius. It can be used to make crushed stone, pumice stone and granular slag, but first it needs to be cooled. Previously, this was done with water, with this method, a lot of hydrogen sulfide and dust are released. With the launch of the new facility, slag cooling will take place without water, which radically reduces the anthropogenic load on the environment.
"The new site will allow us to reduce emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere by about 100 tons per year, as well as completely eliminate hydrogen sulfide emissions. The slag will cool down to ambient temperature by itself. After that, with the help of excavators, it will be loosened and loaded onto vehicles for further processing. It is important that during the loosening process we minimize the release of dust, as our vehicles are equipped with dust suppression systems. In the history of the company, this is the most ambitious environmental project, thanks to which we stand on a par with the most modern and environmentally friendly industries in the world," says Sergey Masyanov, Director of Slagservice LLC.
The launch of the site allowed the creation of 49 additional jobs. In total, 132 people work at the new facility: crane and excavator operators, unloaders, repair mechanics, electricians, power engineers.
Slagservice LLC was established in April 2005. The organization processes all the slags coming from the blast furnace, oxygen converter and electric steelmaking workshops of MMK. At the company's separation plants, a metal-containing fraction is extracted from the slag, which is returned to the steelmaking process, materials in demand in construction and metallurgy are produced at the site of slag-forming mixtures, and the waste rock is sent to the reclamation of spent Magnitogorsk quarries.
