Pakistan's First Direct Reduction Plant Begins Operations
05/31/2013 - Saudi Arabia’s Al-Tuwairqi Holding announced that its new MIDREX® MEGAMOD® direct reduction plant at Tuwairqi Steel Mills, Ltd. in Karachi, Pakistan, began operating at the beginning of this year.
Saudi Arabia’s Al-Tuwairqi Holding announced that its new MIDREX® MEGAMOD® direct reduction plant at Tuwairqi Steel Mills, Ltd. in Karachi, Pakistan, began operating at the beginning of this year.
The Tuwairqi Steel Mills MIDREX® plant is the first of its kind in Pakistan, bringing the latest environment-friendly technological innovations in direct reduction ironmaking to Tuwairqi Steel Mill’s capabilities and to the country.
The new DR plant has a name plate capacity of 1.28 million tonnes per year and the capability to produce hot direct reduced iron (HDRI) and/or cold direct reduced iron (CDRI) simultaneously. Initial production will be 100% CDRI. The plant will be configured to allow the possible addition of briquette machines in the future to produce hot briquetted iron (HBI). The facility employs many of Midrex’s latest innovations to minimize energy consumption and control product quality.
According to Al-Tuwairqi, the MIDREX® process was selected because of its documented proven reliability, ability to consistently produce high quality DRI, HBI and HDRI, and because of the company’s consistent history of fast start up periods.
Al-Tuwairqi also owns and operates two additional MIDREX® plants at Direct Reduction Iron Factory adjacent to Al-Tuwairqi’s Al-Ittefaq Steel Factory in Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Al-Tuwairqi acquired these two MIDREX DR Plants located in Mobile, Ala., from Corus Group Plc. in December 2004. The plants were originally located in Hunterston, Scotland, prior to being moved to the U.S. The two plants each have a production capacity of 400,000 tonnes per year.
