MWI Bureau

Tata Steel has confirmed job cuts up to 3,000 jobs across its European operations which is a part of a restructuring and cost-cutting plan to counter stagnant steel demand in Europe and arrest the declining profitability for the company. It had plans to lower employment costs by reducing employee numbers

The government is planning to float global tenders for the first time for coal mining blocks before the end-2019. This may threaten the Coal Indian monopoly on the fuel supply. India is looking to lower advance payments and offer larger mining blocks to attract global coal miners to invest in its coal sector for the first time. But industry sources say that the measures may not be enough to attract big international miners. The auctions are intended to attract global miners such as Glencore PLC,

The installation of the porous plug on the ladle bottom is useful in homogenizing temperature and chemistry, better slag/metal interaction for impurity removal, faster processing through ladle metallurgy stations, higher yields

Longer plug helps to increase the life of the plug but the plug needs to be of the same thickness as that of the ladle bottom.

The ladle was primarily used as a transfer vessel to transport liquid steel from the converter steelmaking area to the caster. But in present times due to stringent quality demands it serves more as a process vessel where functions like temperature control, deoxidation, carburizing, ferroalloys addition and inclusion floatation and modifications have come into the picture.

The auction of coal mines under the eighth, ninth and tenth round has come to an end with the significant variation in winning bid prices.

Steel manufacturers are witnessing a pick-up in demand. The prices of steel are showing signs of recovery due to pick up in construction activity post-monsoon and festive buying along with an increase in auto sales. Recovery in steel prices is largely due to higher international prices. Although, some industry sources, however, cautioned that the price recovery was supply-led and not demand. But they are hoping that a price hike of Rs 750 tonne may be possible in the next month also.

The inner wall temperature of 1000 degrees centigrade is to be reached within 30-40 minutes. Cracks can be generated for low preheating temperature whereas overheating of SEN causes oxidation and changes the material internal structure leading to crack formation as well.

The permanent lining is exposed to chemical corrosion (resulting from the penetration of steel and slag), mechanical wear, thermal stress (due to thermal cycling). To tackle those challenges, the permanent lining is designed to withstand such demands to allow for the optimal thermal profile to reduce heat loss, strong durability for longer life. Permanent Lining can be installed by vibration or by free-flowing techniques.

a particular position of the dams, inclusion removal tendency increases with an increase in dam heights. However, it was found that for a particular combination of dam heights, as the dams were moved closer to the outlets (with an increase of dimensionless distance) the inclusion removal tendency was seen to decrease. Especially, when the dams are moved closer to the outlets, the presence of recirculation zone near the far outlet region is expected to increase the tendency of inclusions passing through the far outlet and hence it reduces the inclusion removal