On May 26, 2021, at the Zaporizhstal plant of Metinvest Group, an off-site meeting of the environmental commission of the Zaporozhye Regional Council was held with the participation of representatives of the relevant departments of the city and regional councils, as well as the regional laboratory center of the Ministry of Health. Representatives of the regional authorities and the deputy corps were shown how the online monitoring system works at the enterprise, familiarized them with the objects of environmental modernization of the plant and informed about the progress in the implementation of the memorandum of cooperation between Zaporizhstal and the Zaporizhzhya Regional State Administration aimed at improving the environmental situation in the region.
Zaporizhstal undertook an additional obligation to open to the public data on online monitoring of emissions, securing this step in environmental memorandums with the region and the city. Today the plant is among the first to fulfill this requirement. At the finish line, there is another project from the memorandum - equipping the tail sections of sintering machines with additional aspirations. In 2022, Zaporizhstal will start a major overhaul of blast furnace No. 5, which will receive a new aspiration system. For Zaporizhstal and Metinvest, it is extremely important not to declare, but to confirm by real actions their intentions to reduce the environmental burden on the region, "said Alexander Mironenko, General Director of Zaporizhstal.
The head of the plant informed the meeting participants about the principles of the automated online monitoring system, which generates data on emissions for displaying them in the public domain. The company's environmental service specialists accompanied the guests at Zaporizhstal's environmental modernization facilities, demonstrating how environmental equipment and emission control devices work at each modernized unit.
“By providing the data of the online environmental monitoring system in free access for all residents, Zaporizhstal is responding to several challenges. On the one hand, it responds to the public's request for awareness of the real environmental situation, and on the other hand, it actively modernizes production to reduce the burden on the environment. In Zaporozhye there are only two organizations that measure and control the state of atmospheric air - the hydrometeorological center and the regional laboratory center. Having opened access to its own data on the state of the air, the plant makes it possible to use more reliable and professional information obtained with the help of the latest technologies, "said Igor Chumachenko, head of the standing commission on ecology, protection of subsoil and rational use of natural resources of the Zaporizhzhya Regional Council.
Members of the Ecocommission visited the sinter plant, where each of the six sinter machines is equipped with modern technological gas purifiers. Bag filters at each aspiration provide cleaning of exhaust air up to 50 mg /m3 for dust and up to 400 mg /m3 for sulfur dioxide. The plant has invested UAH 1.2 billion in the eco-modernization of the sinter plant.
On the example of the aspiration systems of blast furnace No. 3, the guests were shown the principle of operation of treatment facilities at blast furnaces "Zaporozhtali", providing dust removal up to 20 mg /m3. At the plant, three of the four blast furnaces were reconstructed, including the aspiration systems. For these purposes, the plant has allocated more than 4 billion hryvnia.
Since 2012, Zaporizhstal has invested more than UAH 15 billion in environmental modernization. In addition to equipping the sinter plant with new gas cleaning units, blast furnaces No. 2, 3, 4 were reconstructed with modern aspiration systems. An environmentally friendly hydrochloric acid pickling line was built, which made it possible to completely exclude the discharge from the cold rolling shop No. 1 in the river. Dnieper and sulfuric acid vapors into the atmosphere.
