VISAKHAPATNAM: A fire broke out at Visakhapatnam Steel Plant on Saturday morning after two tuyeres out of 34 burst and a few got damaged at Blast Furnace II.
Fire tenders were rushed to the spot and later the fire was brought under control, plant authorities said.
Fortunately, no casualties or injuries to workers were reported since most of them had gone for breakfast as tapping was closed at the time of the mishap.
Meanwhile, a circular crane got burnt in the BF II and cooling pipes damaged, besides huge quantities of raw material such as coke and iron ore got scattered all over in the oven.
The steel plant authorities said that bursting of tuyeres is common in steel plants and it was a minor incident.
They added, that the production would resume in the next 24 hours, but workers said that the production and equipment damage would be in crores of rupees, besides the restoration process would take at least 5 days.
According to sources, improper cooling process of tuyeres and heavy pressure caused the burst.
Tuyeres are small pipes that permit hot air from the bustle pipe to enter the blast furnace. They are specially shaped nozzles through which a hot air blast is injected into the blast furnace. Tuyere would increase or maintain the heat required to smelt.
They are responsible for creating the heat inside the furnace. They are made of copper and are usually water-cooled with a water jacket to withstand extreme temperatures since they are directly exposed to the furnace temperature.
Workers complained that lack of maintenance and concentration on the cooling system caused the mishap.
“Cooling of the tuyers is important. But concentration on them had come down. Earlier, manpower was placed at the cooling process but now machine technology has been adopted. Apart from this, instead of coal now pulverized coal injection method (PCI) is adopted which means dust coal is sent for fire, which causes melting of hot metal immediately. The mishap caused more than Rs 10-crore loss to the plant,” a worker who wished to be anonymous said.
