Steel Plants

The steelmaking process involves the process of producing steel from iron ore. The basic impurities like nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, and excess carbon are removed from the basic iron. The other elements like manganese, nickel, chromium, and vanadium are added to derive the different grades of steel.

The basic infrastructure of steel manufacturing comprises coke ovens and coal chemical plants, sinter plants, blast furnaces, steel melt shops, and rolling mills. This is done either by a Basic oxygen furnace or an electric arc furnace. In the first method, the hot metal from the blast furnace is fed to a basic oxygen furnace after pre-treatment and removal of impurities. Molten steel is derived in the liquid form and the impurities are removed as gaseous and as slag. In the EAF process, steel scrap is melted with the aid of an electric arc produced by graphite electrodes. This is used either as ingots or fed to the continuous casting process.
Corex gas and syngas are also used in the modern-day process of steel making. These are alternatives to the blasting furnace methods and use oxygen.

The applications involved are blast furnace gas or coke over gas, corex gas, oxygen, steam, nitrogen, and hydrogen. Acids are used in the pickling plant for surface cleaning of sheets to remove the rust layer.

Cooling water, steam, and hot water are used throughout the steel plant at various locations. Predominantly large-size butterfly valves are used more in the steel plants for the gas application than large-size gate valves and dual plate check valves. Wherever high temp applications are involved people use metal seated triple offset valves. Gate, globe, check, and ball valves are used in smaller sizes for various utility applications.