A new ‘Turbo blower (TB-4)’ with auxiliaries that include a ‘Re-circulating Cooling water System’ for continuous feeding of cold blast air to the new Blast Furnace No.3. was inaugurated at Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd’s (RINL) Visakhapatnam Steel Plant recently. A press release from the company describes it as India’s largest turbo blower, and also states that the commissioning of TB-4 is a major step towards inaugurating the newly built 3800 cum volume largest Blast Furnace (BF 3).

The blower, which is far advanced compared to the three existing blowers at the plant, has a capacity of 4,18,000 nm³/hr with a discharge temperature of 266^oC. It was constructed at a cost of around Rs. 1,450 crore.

The commissioning of BF 3 will help RINL add capacity of 1-1.5 mt of hot metal immediately, which will increase to around 3 mtpa of hot metal once the new operations stabilise.

Speaking on the occasion, A.P. Choudhary, CMD, RINL said that the step was significant as the TB 4 was the last auxiliary unit commissioned, and had paved the way for the integrated commissioning of new units. With this step, new products from VSP would be launched in the market shortly.