business & market news
30
Tube ProducTs InTernaTIonal March 2014
Three miles of pipe for
blast furnace cooling
A new blast furnace at Tata Steel’s Port
Talbot steelworks has been equipped
with three miles of cooling pipework,
installed by Fairwood Fabrications and
supplied by Pipe Center.
The £9mn installation was part of a
complete rebuild of No 4 Blast Furnace
at the plant in South Wales, UK, which
has created one of the most modern
iron making facilities in the world. The
pipework forms an essential part of
the furnace’s temperature management
system, delivering cooling water to
the furnace shell’s cupro-nickel heat
exchanging plates.
The new No4 Blast Furnace has
specially designed closed-circuit cooling
water systems that are significant
improvements from the previous blast
furnace in terms of safety and reliability.
The large volumes of water required are
supplied via two 42" carbon steel mains,
with two pump houses,
each with operational and
standby pumps.
Major sections of the
pipework, including heat
exchangers and valves,
were prefabricated offsite
at Fairwood Fabrications’
facility at Port Talbot.
The project included 18 giant 36" high-
pressure gate valves, sourced by Pipe
Center from a leading international
supplier.
Fairwood
Fabrications
attended witness tests carried out on
the valves by the manufacturer to 12
bar. The project required 150 cast iron
gate valves in total, from 2" to 36", plus
an assortment of standard non-return
and butterfly valves.
“All pipework had to be shot-blasted
and treated with four layers of epoxy
prior to fabrication,” said Wayne
Adams, contract manager at Fairwood
Fabrications. “Therefore it had to be
supplied in a carefully staged sequence
to our contractors, so they could
carry out the preparation work before
supplying to us. Pipe Center did an
excellent job in managing the whole
supply process, and we worked very
closely with them at every stage of the
project.”
Fittings, including flange connections
for the pump house, were also supplied
by Pipe Center. Appropriately, steel for
the pipe was made at Tata Steel’s plant
at Hartlepool.
Part of the successful programme
completion was the coordinated
communication between the Tata Steel
Project Team, Fairwood Fabrications
contract team and Pipe Center’s project
department.
John Walker, Pipe Center’s industrial
sales manager, commented, “It is a
superb project, and a credit to everyone
involved. We have worked closely with
Fairwood over a number of years,
including a furnace rebuild at Port
Talbot in 2001, and have developed an
excellent working partnership.”
Pipe center
– UK
The Port Talbot steelworks
Wayne Adams of Fairwood
at Port Talbot
