At the end of July 2023, the “Performance Excellence Awards” were announced within ArcelorMittal Europe – Flat Products. ArcelorMittal Belgium ranked among the top three in nearly all categories. In the “operational excellence” category, the sinter plants team took home the gold for a project aimed at significantly reducing dust emissions.
In recent years, there has been significant investment in new dust-removal systems for the sinter Plant 2. Just consider the new sleeve filter installed in 2017 or the flue gas recirculation system installed in 2021. At the end of 2022, we examined how we could further reduce our dust footprint using our existing facilities.
In the past, the main focus was on dust emissions from our plants under normal, stable operating conditions, but now we also wanted to address dust emissions in non-regular situations, such as during a shutdown or a restart of a plant after downtime. We considered all installations with environmental impact: the sleeve filter, the flue gas recirculation, and the “bypass” for the residual gas. We wanted to improve the safety, (dedusting) capacity, and operational reliability of all these installations by looking for synergies between them. As a result, our dust footprint has been reduced by more than 60%, while also significantly reducing or even avoiding visual disturbance during downtime. This benefits our own employees, contractors, and neighbors.
