The first RH Degasser to operate in India was built for Hindustan Steel Company's Alloy Steel Plant (ASP) at Durgapur (now Steel Authority of India Limited: SAIL) by Fuji Steel in 1968. The unit was based upon the original Ruhrslahl design and was used as a development plant until 1991 before being dismantled. This secondary steelmaking milestone was followed in 1996 by the first modern RH unit installed at Tata Iron and Steel Company's Jamshedpur Works. The unit was built by MDM Messo of Duisburg. Germany and gave TISCO (now Tata Steel) the lead in domestically produced ultra-low carbon steels. Tata Steel has been making iron and steel in Jamshedpur since 1907. Despite its age. continued modernisation has enabled the current configuration of Tata's Jamshedpur works to produce some of the highest quality steels made in India. The site includes three separate steelmaking shops: LD#L I.D#2: and LD#3. All ultra-low carbon grades are made exclusively in I.D#2. The original Rll plant in LD#2 has operated continuously since installation and following a performance enhancing upgrade by Vacmetal UK in 2005 has produced high volumes of world class standard interstitial free (IF) steels.In spite of its high performance characteristics the RI1 plant, wtien operating at its full capability, was still insufficient to meet the capacity demands of Tata's customers and the increasing ultra-low carbon strip market in India.'fata entered into discussions with the secondary steelmaking plant builder SMS Mevae as to how they could increase R! 1 capacity substantially in the limited space available in LD#2 steelmaking shop. Using the steelmaking and market knowledge from the Tata team and the process and plant building experience of SMS Mevac a "Duplex RH" solution was developed.The Duplex RH unit was built during 2015 and commissioned on the 30* of March 2016. This paper aims to highlight the challenges and problems encountered by the team during the design and build phase, the solutions found and ultimately the performance of the plant in its first year of operation.
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