As part of its green-friendly initiative, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant will double its solar power capacity with an additional investment of Rs. 35 crore. After synchronising the 5 MW solar power plant with the State Grid, a few months ago, RINL is able to meet its requirement for its township and administrative building. The solar plant, which was commissioned by Union Steel Secretary Aruna Sharma on December 16, involved an investment of nearly Rs. 35 crore in the project. The RINL is among the few public sector units which forayed into solar power generation. RINL Chairman-cum-Managing Director P. Madhusudan told The Hindu that they were committed to producing green energy by using blast furnace and other waste materials. He said they had a proposal to increase solar power capacity to 10 MW.
The RINL achieved a landmark with the commissioning of a completely pollution-free 120 MW power plant by using 100 blast furnace gas at a cost of Rs. 676 crore. A project of such a large scale was achieved for the first in the steel industry. In addition to this, the average power requirement of the VSP at 6.3 million tonne stage is 418 MW. The RINL is currently having three turbo generators each 60 MW (180 MW) capacity and two turbo generators of 67.5 (135 MW) each taking the total captive power generation capacity of 315 MW.
Waste energy recovery
The RINL adopted since inception state-of-the-art technologies in tapping the waste energy and thereby becoming a trend-setter in captive power generation in the steel industry. As part of waste energy recovery in the expansion and modernisation of the existing units, RINL has installed a 20.6 MW from Sinter Heat Recovery Power Plant under Green Aid Plan of Japan (NEDO project) built at a cost of Rs. 300 crore. It will generate 14 MW from waste heat recovery system in Coke Oven Battery-4. It also has plans to produce 14 MW from Top Pressure Recovery Turbine from Blast Furnace-3.
Source:TH
