Burnpur: The Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) has started an inquiry into a sudden technical glitch that led to the breakdown of its four-year-old blast furnace - the largest facility of its kind in the country - at IISCO Steel Plant (ISP) here.
The sudden snag has led to a monetary loss of Rs 4 crore a day since August 15 when production was halted.
A high-powered team from SAIL's technical committee comprising experts from different steel plants of the public sector company and its research and development wing in Ranchi visited the ISP at Burnpur in West Burdwan's Asansol last week to inquire into the incident.
"The experts in the inquiry team will determine the cause of the sudden technical snag at the blast furnace and suggest steps to ensure that such an incident doesn't recur," said Bhaskar Kumar, ISP spokesperson.
The blast furnace, built with technical assistance from Posco in South Korea, started operations on November 30, 2014. It has a production capacity of 2.7 million tonnes of hot metal per year.
ISP officials said since Posco had supplied the technology for the blast furnace, experts from South Korea as well as all other SAIL units were mobilised to the IISCO plant for its restoration.
"We also called Russian blast furnace experts deployed at other SAIL units to IISCO to help in the prompt restoration. We have been able to restore almost 50 per cent normalcy," said an ISP official.
According to Kumar, the blast furnace will be fully operational by the end of this week. However, some believe it may be tough to meet such a deadline.
IISCO Steel Plant - one of the two major economical lifelines in the region - was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after completion of Rs 16,000-crore modernisation and expansion project in 2015.
The country's oldest integrated steel plant IISCO was merged with SAIL in 2006.
IISCO officials said on August 15, the lone blast furnace at IISCO Steel Plant had gone out of order because of voltage dip in power supply, which tripped the compressors of the oxygen plant. This stopped the supply of nitrogen from the oxygen plant to the blast furnace for coal dust injection, which meets 25 per cent of the blast furnace's fuel supply requirements.
"When 25 per cent of the blast furnace's fuel supply needs were choked off, the hearth temperature started declining. Corrective actions were initiated immediately but the condition of the furnace deteriorated," said an IISCO official.
Junior heavy industries minister Babul Supriyo said a meeting was expected to be held at Durgapur Steel Plant on September 10 where senior SAIL and steel ministry officials would be present to discuss the matter.
"I have already discussed the matter with Union steel minister Chaudhary Birender Singh," said Supriyo who is also Asansol MP.
