Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant (a key asset of Severstal) achieved the use of 209.6 m3 of gas per ton of cast iron with a solid fuel consumption (328.1 kg/ton). This is the industry's minimum consumption of solid carbon fuels for iron smelting in 2025.
Illustrative photo: Severstal.
The technology of replacing solid fuels with natural gas in blast furnaces is aimed at increasing the sustainability and economic efficiency of steel production.
In the current market situation, this is critically important, said Evgeny Vinogradov, General Director of the Severstal Russian Steel Division and Resource Assets.
"This approach is in line with Severstal's technological development strategy, which involves the production of pig iron with a high proportion of iron ore pellets and increased consumption of natural gas. These technological changes are related to the company's goals in terms of reducing the burden on the environment and climate. Severstal's results and developments are unique not only for the Russian Federation, but also for the global metallurgical community. The systematic reduction of solid fuel consumption by making changes to the technological modes of operation of the units (from extraction of raw materials to production of liquid steel), increasing the consumption of natural gas and using hydrogen to reduce iron helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3.4% compared with the baseline level of emissions in 2020, which is the fulfillment of the short-term goal of the decarbonization strategy."Severstal".Evgeny Vinogradov added that the results were made possible thanks to a large-scale re-equipment program for blast furnaces, for which over 100 billion rubles have been allocated in recent years. As part of this program, blast furnace No. 3 was built at CherMK, and major repairs of furnaces No. 4 and No. 5 were carried out. Collectively, these units produce more than 80% of the products. Today, their current technical condition and operational parameters fully comply with modern production requirements and environmental standards.
Today, the technology is used at all five operating furnaces of the plant and covers all aspects of blast furnace control: from testing blast furnace loading modes to searching for combinations of loaded materials and selecting blast gas parameters. Severstal holds a patent for key elements of this technology.
The volume of pig iron production at CherMK in 2025 amounted to 11.2 million tons, which is 2% higher than in 2024, when the third blast furnace No. 4 was stopped for retrofitting.
Solid carbon fuel is the sum of all solid carbon components loaded into the blast furnace as part of the charge (approx. "Severstal"). It's skip coke.
