OREANDA-NEWS. January 05, 2016. ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih has won the 2015 all-Ukrainian ecological competition “Environmental Quality and Safety” for the eighth time, having been commended for its successful ongoing efforts to reduce the site’s environmental footprint.

The competition has been organised by the all-Ukrainian non-governmental organisation (NGO) ”Living Planet” since 2002 with the support of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine. A total of 150 organisations took part this year, with ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih once again being declared as one of the winners.

The site has also been ISO 14001:2004 certified since 2009, which has allowed an increased focus on environment aspects. More specifically, the award this year came on the back of the plant’s successful efforts to reduce its environmental impact through the implementation of new technologies.
 
In fact, despite the current challenging situation in the steel and mining industries, ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih has invested 1.4bn UAH (approx. US\\$60m) in environmental improvement projects in 2014 and 2015 alone. Sixteen gas cleaning units have been reconstructed and nine modern units have been built since last year to meet the current environmental standards. As part of the overhaul of blast furnace number six, two powerful gas cleaning machines have also been built to process gas from the casing yard to the stock house. These are helping maintain dust emissions below 30 mg/m?, lower than the government limits of 50 mg/m?.

In addition to this, a unique technology has been implemented at the site to reduce СО emissions at converter number six where cleaned gas is sent to the flare stack for CO combustion. The same technology will be applied at all of the site’s converters as part of planned future improvements.

In the mining department, 15 gas cleaning units have been modernised at the crushing and sizing plant as well as at ore beneficiation plant number one. All the facilities have been equipped with gas cleaning units in line with European standards. All of these investments are part of ArcelorMittal plan of continual improvement and modernisation programme initiated to ensure the company can deliver the highest standards of service and product to its customers.

Liana Maksimenko, head of the site’s environment department said: “This is our eighth win in this competition and we are proud that our plant was again rightly rewarded as one of the best”.

“Additional projects are being carried out at sinter shop number two, the refractory, the lime shop, and the coke and by-product departments to gradually replace obsolete equipment and implement new, modern technologies that will allow us to further reduce our environmental impact in the region”, Liana added.