Steel industry produces steel materials required for industries like automobiles, railways, construction, etc. In the steel industry, various metals (pure or in various alloys) give shape to thin sheets, tubes, and semi-finished products. This process is complex and variegated, requiring a significant amount of energy and large-scale systems.

Therefore a steel plant requires several industrial fans & blowers for numerous purposes like- drying & heating ore pellets, handling the undersized dust particles, removing and cleaning waste gases, providing combustion air to burn coke, exhausting waste by-products, cooling the product to remove heat, etc.

The fans and blowers used in the steelmaking process are required to have high reliability and high efficiency for stable operation over a long period in harsh environments. Centrifugal or Axial fans are used in the steel, metals, and alloy production process to tackle typical problems such as high temperatures and pollution control.

Whether you’re manufacturing steel from raw materials like iron ore, coal, and limestone in a blast furnace or by recycling the material using electric arc furnaces; both the production processes require several fans and blowers for drying & heating ore pellets, handling the undersized dust particles, removing waste & gases, providing combustion air to burn coke, exhausting waste by-products, cooling the product to remove heat, etc.

Industrial fans useful for the steel industry

Typical applications for these processes include combustion systems for furnaces, fans for cooling of drive machinery, pickling exhaust and furnaces in forge shops, and exhaust systems on quench lines. Industrial fans and blowers required by a specific process systems, and related,

10 Applications in the steel industry are:

  1. The process of melting furnaces uses backward curved fans downstream the filter and discharges the combustion air to the environment. Likewise cooling process requires high-flow fans that put environment air to transport conveyors.
  2. During the process of sintering, various fans and blowers such as large main exhaust fan and circulating blower are used to uniformly apply heat to the raw materials.
  3. Various fans and blowers (i.e. Dust collecting fan, fan for hot blast furnace, casting bed dust blower etc.) are employed around the blast furnace, while taking out the pig iron from iron ore.
  4. In a converter, the pig iron is refined to produce “steel”. The byproduct gas of the converter is highly useful as a fuel, and the gas fans and blowers for recovering it, fans and blowers for environmental equipment or dust collection, etc. are used.
  5. Many byproduct gases generated in the steelworks can be reused as fuel. The gas booster is used to supplement pressure when pumping byproduct gas of blast furnace and coke oven and the like.
  6. Palletization process requires several industrial centrifugal fans  to supply process air for drying, preheating, indurating and cooling. The fans employed here should be capable of handling both low level and high level heat produced during the process. For instance, if we consider indurating section where the pellets get dried and heated for hardening, centrifugal fans used in the process have to handle air of different temperatures in updraft drying zone to remove moisture from the pellet bed and to supply downdraft drying air for heating up the pellets.
  7. Sintering plants use several types of centrifugal fans like forced draught combustion air fans to support the combustion, induced draught waste gas fans to draw the gases off through dust removal system, cooling fans to cool the hot sintered product, hot air fans to recover heat from the hot sintered product and return it to the process, and various other fans for exhaust and dedusting.
  8. Dust removal system or Wet scrubber is required to remove dust & waste gases generated during the pretreatment of Basic oxygen process. It is essential to keep the production environment clean from pollution.  The mechanism of induced draft air is generally used for waste gas exhaust.
    Plus the gas releasing from the converter is normally of high temperatures and requires cooling using cooler exhaust fans before it is sent to dry precipitators. The cooler exhaust fans are used to maintain the thermal balance of the furnace.
  9. In the Electric arc furnace the dust generated during the production can contain hazardous waste process due to the high content of impurities in the metal scrap. It can be dangerous to the working environment. Since the process is dependent on high power electric arcs, the temperatures are relatively high near the furnace and within the manufacturing unit. Hence there is a need to regulate the temperatures to keep the work atmosphere safe. To control the volume and temperatures of waste gases and maintain ambient working environment, variety of centrifugal fans are employed for cooling and waste gas reduction.
  10. Besides these other fans which may be used by steel manufacturers are steam exhaust fan, regenerative burner fan, soaking furnace fan, fan for combustion of heating furnace, exhaust fan, rail cooling fan, RTO equipment fan, direct fans for electric furnace, backwash fans, building dust collecting fans etc.

As industrial requirements have become increasingly stringent and demanding, UDCI has been able to continually supply high-performance fans, which are field-proven to perform optimally in challenging operating environments. Through the use of special coatings that can protect against corrosion, acids and abrasion, special seals, individual motors or many other special solutions; we can build the right SYMBIOSIS fan for your requirements.

From the large combustion air fans to process fans, Usha Die Casting Industries offers a variety of blowers & fans for use in steel making. Contact our experts to understand the fan requirement for your Steel manufacturing facility.