2024-01-21 21:00:36
At the foot of Hoogoven 7 on the Tata Steel site, maintenance manager Thomas Mous looks up in surprise. Does a blast furnace have a tap to drain the pig iron? That’s impossible, he explains. “The oven wall should not have a weak spot and it has little resistance to liquid iron. A steel crane would melt away.”
So no tap. When tapping, a hole must be drilled once more and once more in the oven wall, which is lined on the inside with refractory bricks. This takes place in the oven house, a large space at the bottom of the blast furnace that reaches as high as the Utrecht Dom Tower.
Mous enters the furnace house and the bright red glow in the twilight indicates that the pig iron is flowing out through the drilled hole. It ends up through a refractory chute into a container that can ride on train rails and is called a torpedo because of its shape. Outside, another torpedo train was already driving from the blast furnace towards the steel factory.
“We have to plug the hole in time to prevent gas from escaping once all the pig iron has been drained,” says Mous. “The stop gun is ready for that. This injects a refractory cement mass into the hole and it hardens within twenty minutes.” The oven wall is drilled open and sealed once more and once more.
A huge extractor hood, just like in the forge
A large new installation hangs above the tap hole. “That is in fact a huge extractor hood,” says Tjeerd Meenks, responsible for the program that aims to make Tata Steel’s factories cleaner: Roadmap plus called. It is a blacksmith’s hood, the name refers to the ancient forge. Three new forge hoods have been hung in Blast Furnace 7 and they have also been installed in the other blast furnace, number 6. A complex operation due to the size of the hoods and also because production in Blast Furnace 7 has not been stopped.
“With such an additional extraction point directly above the drain hole, we can collect the released dust more efficiently,” says Meenks. “The goal is to have three-quarters less visible smoke emissions from the roof.” Without extraction, such an unintentional gas cloud disappears into the air.
Work is also being done elsewhere on the site to reduce the nuisance. For example, the construction of a windbreak has started on the North Sea side. This must prevent dust from blowing away from the raw material storage.
“The screen will be eighteen meters high, one kilometer long and is made of perforated steel,” says Meenks. “The holes ensure that no fast downwind is created, but that the wind actually has less of a grip on the material.” With southwesterly winds, this should result in less dust in Wijk aan Zee.
The pressure on Tata Steel has grown
Tata Steel says it wants to limit the inconvenience to local residents. It has to be that way if it wants to secure the future of the company. Because since the celebration of Hoogovens’ centenary in 2018, political and social pressure on Tata has grown significantly. The company must produce cleaner.
Last year, the Dutch Safety Board showed that the government (province and environmental agency) had given the company too much space. The RIVM found that emissions cause health damage to the environment, such as possibly more lung cancer and lower life expectancy. Sound, light and smell can also cause stress and health problems.
“Both reports have sent a clear message that we take very seriously,” Tata said. The government was clear: if the company wants to receive a subsidy to build a modern factory in the coming years, the nuisance to the environment will have to be significantly reduced.
The fire was lit a hundred years ago
Tata Steel is now celebrating another centenary under a different star. This Monday marks exactly one hundred years since the first blast furnace was lit. Six years following the company was founded, iron production started.
On January 22, 1924, the management and staff representatives gathered at the foot of the colossus. Because director Henri Wenckebach was ill, his wife, Margarita Wenckebach-Snellen, lit the fire in the blast furnace at half past twelve, which was filled with iron ore and coke (purified coal). The winter cold gave way to scorching heat, the book states Driven by steel (2018).
Two days later, the red-hot iron flowed from the furnace into the prepared sand beds, where it might solidify. The first sample was taken to the bedridden director Wenckebach, who wrote a poem regarding the combustion and died a month later. From 1939, steel was also made in the IJmond.
Big changes
Currently, Blast Furnaces 6 and 7 produce approximately 7 million tons of steel per year. In doing so, the company emits 12 million tons of CO2 out. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35 to 40 percent by 2030, Tata must undergo major changes.
The core of the transition is the almost complete replacement of coal by green hydrogen and natural gas in the pig iron production process. HeraCless is the name of the sustainability plan that is now being assessed by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.
The intention is for Hoogoven 7 to disappear by 2030. Instead, there should be an electric arc furnace, which makes steel from iron ore that has been preprocessed with hydrogen rather than coal. This happens in a DRI, a direct reduction factory. Oxygen is removed from the iron ore, resulting in pure iron. The electric arc furnace is also suitable for processing more scrap as raw material for new steel.
Tata Steel wants money from the government
But HeraCless also has its fair share of uncertainty. Tata Steel wants support from the Dutch government and is therefore negotiating a so-called tailor-made agreement with the Ministry of Economic Affairs. “The construction of the new installations and the closure of the existing installations (…) cannot be carried out without substantial support from the government,” says Tata Steel Netherlands.
Parent company Tata Steel from India, which had a turnover of $30 billion last financial year, also calls this government support essential for a strong business case for Tata Steel Netherlands.
To ensure that the Ministry of Economic Affairs makes the right choice, it has asked former minister Hans Wijers and banker Frans Blom to investigate alternatives. What if, for example, the state does not make a tailor-made agreement with Tata Steel? We are still waiting for the outcome of this. And when the new factories are finally built, will there be enough green hydrogen available?
The regulator accuses Tata Steel of speed camera behavior
In the meantime, the regulator has tightened the reins. The North Sea Canal Area Environmental Service is even investigating whether the permit for the coking factories can be revoked, because they are outdated and cause a lot of odor nuisance. Coal is heated in the two factories to produce coke.
The environmental agency has already imposed a penalty on Tata on several occasions. This has now cost the company more than a million euros. Mario Bakker, director of supervision and enforcement at the environmental agency, said that Tata exhibits ‘speed camera behavior’. “You see that some measures are only taken when we tighten the thumbscrews.” Tata Steel says it is now renovating the coke factories.
The Tata site is located in the municipalities of Heemskerk, Beverwijk and Velsen. If it is up to the aldermen involved, Kooksfabriek 2 will close as quickly as possible. In a letter they called the nuisance and health damage caused by Tata Steel unacceptable. They demand that a hard end date be set for the transition. “It is important for residents to know when the transition is complete. We think that steel production should be completely coal-free by 2035,” said councilor Brigitte van den Berg (D66) at a press conference.
Inconvenience is unacceptable, but the jobs must remain
The pressure from environmental organizations and concerned citizens has been justified, Van den Berg said. “That pressure helped us achieve this transition. Before 2018, too little was actually done. Then people stood in front of a closed door. Because we said: Tata is very important, we are not going to talk regarding that. Something has really changed in the past five years.”
But the aldermen are categorically once morest closing the centenary factory, which employs 9,000 people in IJmuiden. They are concerned regarding the 800 jobs that may be lost at the company. “My ancestors came here following the closure of the coal mines in Limburg. When you see the effect it has when you push away a basic industry… That festers for decades,” said councilor Jeroen Verwoort (VVD) van Velsen.
They see a future in a sustainable steel factory in combination with an energy port, where electricity from the sea is brought to land and the hydrogen economy takes shape. Verwoort: “When you mention IJmuiden, people think of fish and steel. Hopefully they will also think regarding energy in the future.”
Also read:
Close Tata? Writer Saskia Sluiter thinks that is a shame. ‘Of course it has to be cleaner’
Writer Saskia Sluiter delved into the history of the area where the blast furnaces appeared. A paradise has disappeared, there at Wijk aan Zee. But she would also not like to see Tata Steel disappear now.
RIVM: There is a direct relationship between Tata Steel emissions and the risk of disease
Eighty percent of the residents of Wijk aan Zee experience nuisance from Tata Steel, and this has major health consequences, says the RIVM. For example, emissions cause cases of lung cancer.
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