OREANDA-NEWS. July 11, 2012. General Manager Mr. He Wenbo of Baoshan Iron & Steel Group Co., Ltd. and Deputy Secretary Mr. Chou Xuping of State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), on the site of Report Conference of 2011 Baosteel Society Responsibility, together unveiled the establishment of Baosteel Mineral Wool Technology (Ningbo) Co., Ltd., reported the press-centre of Baosteel.

This new company, established jointly by the Baosteel Development Company, Ningbo Steel and Baosteel Engineering, will be relying on Baosteel independent intellectual property, to become the first iron and steel waste recycling company which products mineral slag wool from blast furnace hot slag in China.

Mineral slag wool referred as “mineral wool”, with excellent thermal insulation, sound absorption and fireproof performance, widely application for heat preservation, thermal insulation, fireproofing and noise reduction on various industrial and civil construction, is the main energy saving material as the internationally recognized “fifth conventional energy resources”. With the deepening of national energy saving and emission reduction works, a huge development opportunity has been offered to mineral wool products and its applications. Due to increasing tense of energy supply, and more and more high demand for building comfort, construction energy saving, fireproofing, noise insulation and reduction become the focus of attention, the mineral wool products will become new construction material widely used in construction field.

The traditional production of mineral wool products used blast furnace cold slag as the raw material, must consume large amount of energy (coke) to increase temperature to 1400~1500 until melting, which wasted self resource of sensible heat of hot slag. After many years research and development, Baosteel has found one process technology for production of high quality mineral wool by blast furnace hot slag of 1400, and break the single recycling mode of the slag by water quench treatment to becoming blast furnace water slag.

The annual output of blast furnace slag is 13 million tons in Baosteel. If the blast furnace hot slag as the raw material for the production of mineral wool, the added-value of recycling of the slag will increase around several ten times; at same time, utilization of the sensible thermal resource of blast furnace could be maximized, in order to not only reduce substantially production consumption, and also prevent second pollution due to the clean energy. The products with excellent insulating property, could reduce substantially the construction energy consumption caused by the heat loss after its utilization.

It is understood that the pilot project of Baosteel Mineral Wool Company Ningbo Steel Blast Furnace Slag production of mineral wool will start in this year, to construct the pilot production line of granular wool with annual output of 20000 tons. The production line, taken hot slag of No.1 blast furnace of Ningbo Steel as the main raw material, will realize the industrial operation and scale development of mineral wool production by blast furnace hot slag, and become integrated system solution provider of green, energy-saving, environmental protection and high cost-effective hot slag of new type of material products, process technology, equipment integration.

The products can be widely used in national large steel structure plant and civil steel structure residence and many industries as well as shipping, chemical industry, iron and steel, power generation. After the project put into operation next year, Baosteel will become the first iron and steel enterprise which use successfully the blast furnace hot slag to product mineral wool in China, to achieve the high added-value of the slag. Baosteel will reach a leading position in domain of using high added-value metallurgical slag, and play a demonstration role in the recycling economy, energy-saving and emission reduction in Chinese iron and steel industry.