Sail, Romelt Sign Engg Services Pact

Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL) has signed an agreement with Romelt SAIL (India) Ltd (RSIL) for providing wide ranging project engineering services for setting up an iron making plant at Nagarnar near Jagdalpur in Chhatisgarh.

The plant, set up by National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), was initially designed to produce 0.3 million tonne of iron annually. It will be subsequently expanded to a capacity level of 1.5 million tonne.

The estimated value of services to be provided by SAIL is around Rs 4 crore.

RSIL, a joint venture of SAIL, NMDC and three Russian companies, had entered into a contract with NMDC on October 16, 2001, to be the principal consultant providing general consultancy, engineering project management and construction supervision services for the project.

The project is the first such venture in the world to use the revolutionary Romelt Technology for producing iron. This technology, developed by Moscow Institute of Steel & Alloys (MISA), Russia, after two decades of intensive research, is the only of its kind to convert environment polluting iron bearing wastes into iron and granulated slag, an useful input for producing cement.

Romelt technology uses iron bearing wastes in its natural form without any preparation using only ordinary non-coking coal and burnt lime for process conversion.

This has proved to be a boon to metallurgical works and mines where huge quantities of iron bearing pollutants are generated. RSIL has been propagating this novel technology and has granted sub-license to NMDC for utilising the technology for its plant at Nagarnar.

NMDC, in turn, opted for this technology to overcome the vexing problem of solid pollutants.

The proposed plant would be using the tailing slimes generated in the mining operation at Bailadila as the principal feed stock. This tailing, being a waste material, has been causing environmental degradation. With the setting up of the plant the waste will get converted into useful material.

NMDC has already acquired the required land for the project on 29th September,2001. Preparation of Plant Layout Scheme for the site has already started and is scheduled to be completed by the end of October 2001. A challenging target of completing the project by second quarter of 2003 has been set.