OREANDA-NEWS. On August 20, 2008 Mechel OAO (NYSE: MTL), one of the leading Russian mining and metals companies, announced that reconstruction of the last of four systems for gas cleaning at its Bratsk Ferroalloy Plant subsidiary is near completion, the press-centre of Mechel reported.

Reconstruction of gas cleaning installations in Mechel’s Bratsk Ferroalloy Plant began in 2003 and has now entered the completion stage. Initially all of the four systems for furnace gas cleaning were equipped with EG-1-9-6-4 electrical filters, which were inefficient for furnace top gas clearing in ferrosilicon production.

Upgrading from electrical filters to bag collectors was a significant step in the reconstruction and now enables the system to deplete impurities from outgoing furnace top gases by 99.6%. Gas is purified as impure gas enters into the area of filtering bags and passes over them from top to bottom and penetrates from the outside to the inside of the bags. Purified gas enters pure air cameras before being emitted into the chimney through the gas flow system. The dust that sedimented onto the inner side of filtering bags devolves into a bin.

Upgrading the gas cleaning facilities was started to minimize the emission of air pollutants. Mechel is planning the construction of a facility at the plant that would increase the density of devolved dust from filtering bags and allow for its sale as raw material in production of extra-strength grade concrete. This will enable the Bratsk Ferroalloy Plant to liquidate the slag reservoir and to shift to non-waste production.

Transitioning to environmentally-friendly technologies and equipment is one of the priorities of the corporate modernization program for Mechel’s facilities. This transition is performed within the scope of achieving a government nation-wide objective of improving the environmental and labor safety conditions in industrial regions of the state.