The editorial board of the Metal monthly addressed executive director of the Ukrainian Association of Ferrous Metallurgical Enterprises Mr. Vladimir Tereschenko with a request to tell the readers about current problems with metallurgical waste.
SLAG: SECONDARY PRODUCT
SLAG: SECONDARY PRODUCT
Metallurgists’ problems: accumulation of slag products
The editorial board of the Metal monthly addressed
executive director of the Ukrainian Association of Ferrous Metallurgical Enterprises Mr.
Vladimir Tereschenko with a request to tell the readers about current problems with
metallurgical waste.
- Mr. Tereschenko, the problem of waste accumulation at
integrated metallurgical mills arouse quite a while ago and was not caused by objective
factors. The first question in this respect is what metallurgical by-products are
considered waste and what are classified as secondary resources?
- It is the terminology system that was the main reason why
slag has come to be considered as waste, whereas it is precisely a secondary resource
derived from metal-making. Slag should not have been classified as waste. Unfortunately,
ecological authorities of Ukraine put nearly all slag products on the list of harmful
waste types, pursuant to provision of the Basel Convention, to which Ukraine acceded,
although they had no grounds for such a classification. It is natural that giving slag
products the status of “harmful waste” led to a prohibition of slag removal from the
territory of metallurgical mills. Because production processes are continuous, slag is
accumulated and piled up at enterprises. For example, Azovstal Works had to use a portion
of the water area of the Sea of Azov for slag storage although it was not envisaged by the
project. It is unnatural and unreasonable to use the territory of the country’s seas as
an industrial polygon.
Experts of the Association put forth their efforts to have
slag products excluded from the “black” list and included to the “green” one.
Finally, they were able to do that, which meant that the procedure for removal of slag
from metallurgical mills became easier. It must be pointed out that from the very
beginning, slag products did not contain any of the components that the Basel Convention
defined as harmful and sufficient for inclusion of a material into the list of harmful
waste types. Thus, official ecological authorities committed a wrongful act, not just a
mistake, because they hoped to benefit from the harmful status of slag products (extra
fees for transportation, registration, issuance of ecological certificates etc.). It all
comes down to the fact that payment of these additional fees to various ecological bodies
increases the cost of metallurgical products. According to metallurgists’ estimates, an
enterprise has to spend UAH 700 to ship one railcar of slag to the Ukrainian border in
order to supply it to slag consumers abroad. However, it is too expensive for buyers of
slag, who do not wish to purchase it at such a high price. Thus, mills have to lower the
offered price for slag resources, which incurs losses. These losses further lead to fines
imposed on metallurgical mills by state taxation authorities for the artificial lowering
of reported profits. This chain reaction has indicated how a wrongful decision of
ecological authorities has eventually done harm to the ecology, which that decision was
supposed to protect. This is why, we try to have slag classified as a by-product of
metallurgical production that can be sold to consumers. Because slag was determined as a
harmful material, it was not used in road construction and concrete production. These two
industries could be the largest slag consumers.
- As far as I know, when you worked at Donetsk
Metallurgical Mill, a team headed by you designed and constructed a plant for processing
of dump slag and separation, which was, to an extent, a technological novelty. Is it still
used by metallurgical mills?
- At that time, it was the first plant designed for slag
grinding and screening. The new design allowed ground slag to be sorted by fractions
according to particular orders received from consumers, who usually need slag of a certain
particle size. Operation of such a plant increases the mill’s returns on slag sales,
because a high-quality slag fraction can be sold at a much higher price than bulk slag. I
would like to emphasize that the plant designed by our team is still operating at Donetsk
Metallurgical Mill and has resolved the problem of slag processing for the mill, whereas
the cost of its construction was hundreds of times lower than the price paid for similar
units imported from Great Britain, France, or other countries. Thus, I regard import of
these units from abroad unreasonable.
- Do you mean that we can handle this with our own
resources?
- Certainly. In addition, construction of such units is
another source for domestic metal consumption.
- Besides that, you designed and launched a unit for
guniting of slag buckets. How important is this problem for metallurgical mills now?
- The main objectives of guniting of slag buckets were a
decrease of the number of slag pans required for metal production and a reduction of metal
losses during smelting processes. Some portion of metal gets into slag-transporting
buckets and if insufficiently protected a bucket may burn out and fail. As a result, an
enterprise suffers additional losses. The guniting system weightily reduced the number of
slag transporters required for metal production. The system is fully operational today. It
has not been spread to other mills although the idea is worth being introduced at all
metallurgical mills.
- Today your Association is working jointly with the
Supreme Council Committee on sustainable development and waste standardization.
- Indeed, under the current situation, when natural
resources and energy are getting increasingly expensive, problems of rational
resource-saving and inclusion of secondary resources into production processes require
urgent solutions.