With blast furnace (BF) V of the Rourkela Steel Plant being shut down since last Thursday after its failure due to technical reason, the overall production of RSP has been affected.
As the blast furnace V is the mother unit of this integrated steel plant, efforts are on to commence its production at the earliest, but according to sources, it will not be able to resume normal production before one more week.
Following an interim report of the inquiry committee, which was asked by the management to probe the reasons of the failure of blast furnace, one Deputy General Manager has been placed under suspension on charges of negligence in his duty, holding him responsible for sudden breakdown of blast furnace V of RSP.
Sources said, in an integrated steel plant like the RSP, blast furnace is considered as the mother unit since it is a feeder of all downstream units like steel melting shop, hot strip mill, plate mill and other finishing line products. Out of the five BFs of the RSP, the BF V is again considered key unit with its production capacity of about 8,000 tonnes of hot metals per day against about 1,500 to 1,800 tonnes of hot metal by the other four BFs.
According to the RSP sources, on Thursday last, following sudden breakdown of two power blowing stations, which supplies hot air continuously of the BF V, the production had come in to grinding halt.
Sources in the RSP said that due to sudden breakdown of power blowing stations, out of total number of 36 tubers of the BF V, as many as 33 tubers were choked as the hot metal had flowed in to it.
The management of RSP had immediately swung into action of repairing the same, besides setting up an inquiry committee to probe the reason of the sudden breakdown. The production of other downstream units like SMS II, plate mill, hot strip mill etc. has been adversely affected due to less flow of materials.
In a bid to resume its normal production, RSP has obtained services of several experts of the country. According to RSP sources, former Managing Director of Rourkela Steel Plant Dr BN Singh, former Executive Director in-charge MK Das and one expert from Russia and one from Czech Republic have been camping at Rourkela to help the RSP management for repairing of BF V.
The RSP management, here on Tuesday evening, suspended SS Bhui, Deputy General Manager (CPP-I) of RSP on the charges of negligence. Bhui has been in charge of the operation of two hot power blower stations, whose breakdown primarily was responsible of breakdown of BF V.
The RSP sources claims that the repairing of BF V has been going on in a war footing basis and expected to start its production latest by three to four days.