Lighting the Spark
Furnace №2, symbolically named “Spark” following a tender within Severstal Russian Steel, is the first of three slab-heating furnaces launched within a major upgrade program covering furnace facilities at Mill 2000, which produces 65% of Cherepovets Steel Mill's (CherMK) output.
Severstal has placed an order for two high-performance Stein Digit@l Furnace® from Fives in 2019 to replace existing reheating furnaces №1 and №2, and for a third one in 2021.
Large and complex project
"The construction of the first reheating furnace is the beginning of a major upgrade of furnace facilities of Mill 2000. Our goal is to increase the productivity and energy efficiency of the equipment while reducing production costs. This furnace is completely innovative - it has a different heating concept, on/off burners, and a different level of automation control. Its productivity is twice as high as any of the existing furnaces at Mill 2000: 400 tons per hour for cold slab feeding and 500 tons per hour for hot slab feeding. Therefore, new equipment allows to achieve higher quality heating to obtain rolled products with guaranteed high quality", commented Nikolay Savatin, Head of CherMK Rolling Production Revamping Department.
“Dismantling the old equipment and erecting a new furnace in the frame of existing production was a large and complex project. Despite difficult conditions related to the pandemic and global logistics challenges, the international team completed this project in a record-breaking 11 months, thanks to collaboration and commitment to a single goal,” explained Kirill Bogachev, Project Manager of CherMK Rolling Production Revamping Department.
Fives has more than 150 years of experience in developing and supplying thermal equipment for the steel industry. The Stein Digit@l Furnace® is a crown jewel within the range of Fives’ technologies for reheating and heat treatment, providing:
- Consistent flame shape and heating quality
- Ultra-low NOx
- Substantial fuel saving
- Minimized scale loss and decarburization
- Reduced OPEX due to lower maintenance and fuel consumption