UrBC, Magnitogorsk, October 1, 2019. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Energy-Saving Department is celebrating its birthday this week, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports.

The department got set up in September 1957, when a heating engineering lab was founded at the metallurgical plant; the lab comprised a group of heating engineers from the Electrical Control & Instrumentation Department, the Gas Laboratory staff, and designers from the Furnace Engineering Department.

‘Among other things, the lab was in charge of programming the best thermal parameters for open-hearth furnaces, soaking pits, batch furnaces, continuous furnaces, and heat treatment furnaces for sheet mills; it was also responsible for improvements in the furnace/incinerator design. The lab’s team focused on making the heat-treatment furnaces more heat-efficient, analyzed and set up the heating parameters for the equipment, and launched new refractory and heat-insulating materials. They also had to ensure the conditions necessary for automation of heating appliances and to do the manufacturing setup of the said appliances,’ the company says.

The plant’s current Energy-Saving Department helped MMK save RUB 500m through energy-efficiency enhancing projects last year alone.