OREANDA-NEWS. November 30. Gurievsk Metallurgical Plant (part of the metallurgical holding of the Group of companies ESTAR) performed a blank heat in the open-heart shop applying a new technology of slag cutoff in the process of metal output, says the press release of the ESTAR Group.

The technology allows to cut off the furnace slag with a steel pouring spout of a special construction that keeps the  slag away from the ladle and decreases detrimental impurities in the finished metal through the use of synthetic slag.

The steel tapping spout was designed at the Urals Metal Institute (Yekaterinburg) for the GMP. The preparation for test smelting was going on in 2007. The cost of design works was about 1 mln rubles.

“Application of such method will allow to decrease sulphur content in the finished metal by 0,005%. It is also planned to decrease ferroalloy consumption by 5-10%, increase the lining resistance of pouring ladles”, Gennady Sheremetov, the senior processing engineer of the GMP technical department, was quoted by the press service.

JSC Gurievsk Metallurgical Plant is a large producer of open-hearth steel, balls and rolls.