Jindal Steel starts new met coke oven at Angul plant

Indian steel producer Jindal Steel and Power (JSPL) has commissioned the fourth coke battery at its Angul steel plant, covering the plant's metallurgical coke requirements.

The new coke oven has four batteries, each of which has 45,000 t/month of capacity, enabling to produce a total of 2mn t/yr of met coke. The oven will feed India's largest operating blast furnace at Angul, with 4,554m³ volume, as well as two blast furnaces in Raigarh, Chattisgarh.

JSPL commissioned the world's first synthetic-gas-based direct-reduced iron (DRI) plant at Angul in 2014. The plant is designed to produce steel via the coal-gas-based DRI and electric arc furnace (EAF) route, using high-ash Swadeshi domestic coal to produce synthetic gas for DRI.

But India's Supreme Court cancelled the mine allocation that JSPL had intended to feed the coal gasification system just before the DRI plant was commissioned. This forced the company to install a conventional coke oven to feed the blast furnace.

JSPL is seeking a regular supply of one type of coal from nearby mines at an affordable price to feed the DRI plant and reduce its dependence on imported coking coal, JSPL chairman Naveen Jindal said.

By Dylan Wong