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Hyundai Steel Starts Operation of No. 1 Blast Furnace
01/06/2010 - Hyundai Steel Co. has started operation of its first blast furnace, holding a furnace lighting ceremony at its new integrated steel mill in Dangjin, South Korea. No. 1 blast furnace has an annual capacity of 4 million tonnes.
Hyundai Steel Co., part of the Hyundai Automotive Group, has started operation of its first blast furnace, holding a furnace lighting ceremony at its new integrated steel mill in Dangjin, South Korea.
More than 600 guests and staff attended the ceremony, including the Chairman of the Hyundai Automotive Group, Chung Mong-Koo, and Marc Solvi, CEO of Luxembourg-based Paul Wurth S.A., which oversaw the engineering of the blast furnace.
The ceremony marked the completion of Hyundai Steel's No. 1 blast furnace, which has an annual capacity of 4 million tonnes. The company is aiming to complete its No. 2 blast furnace by early 2011, to reach capacity of 8 million tonnes a year.
Hyundai Steel embarked on this project to build blast furnaces in 2006. The company says the construction of the blast furnace was completed on schedule, three years after groundbreaking.
The No. 1 blast furnace has an inner volume of 5250 m3, maximum width of 17 m, and height of 110 m. Hyundai Steel says that the most state-of-the-art emissions control methods are incorporated into the design of the steel plant. For example, the encapsulated raw material processing facility prevents dust from the iron ore and coking coal from polluting nearby communities.
"Through Hyundai Steel's substantial investment of 5.84 trillion won (approx. US$5 billion), we are constructing the most advanced, eco-friendly integrated steel mill in the world, which is also in line with the government's green growth policy," Mong-Koo said at the ceremony. "The new steel mill will give our automotive group a competitive edge by allowing us to secure and develop our own supply of high-quality steel, while contributing to the national economy at the same time."
"What we see starting up…is the largest-ever blast furnace we designed, and it features the best-available technologies and solutions," said Solvi.
