Great Industry for local civilians and opportunities for younger generations

Please see attached submission

Important infrastructure for the illawarra economy

We need the jobs and investment in the area. This project is vital for our economic future.

Great project to keep employment going

I support the future manufacturing of steel this additional blast furnace will offer for the future of our economy and the future of our children.

I support the continuation of local jobs in the region and sovereign capability to create steel manufacturing in Australia for all purposes.

I support the creation of 250 local jobs and the continuation of more than 10,000 jobs.
This project creates an opportunity for sovereign capability of local steelmaking for decades to come, supporting a variety of industries.

I have lived in the Illawarra for fifty years. I have intimate knowledge of the capability of No 6 Blast Furnace in its original 1996 configuration having been a senior ironmaking technologist during the full span of its first campaign. The furnace was at that time one of the very best furnaces in the world, incorporating several world leading and inovative technologies that promoted process efficiency, safety, environmental performance and plant longevity. Those features (particularly in matters of raw material preparation and charging) are fully retained and will be enhanced by the comprehensive suite of developments proposed in the project.

Demand for steel, both domestically and globally cannot be met by recycling of scrap iron and steel. Technologies that allow large scale ironmaking from virgin ores witout the use of fossil fuells are not yet available. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that the necessary breakthroughs for that goal will be achieved within the next two decades (at least).
In this circumstance, retention of a viable steelmaking industry in The Illawarra, and indeed in Australia, through the next decades will require that No 6 Blast Furnace be relit when No 5 Blast Furnace reaches the end of its current campaign.

Blast furnace campaign life is usually determined by the condition of the refractory lining in the hearth at the bottom of the furnace. I was engaged by Bluescope to assess the condition of No 5 Blast Furnace hearth in 2018. After nine years of service, I found the hearth to be in good condition with every probability that it could remain in service for a further similar period. I understand that some wear has occurred since but that this is within the bounds of normal expectation. This means that the current time frame of Bluescope's aspirations to prepare No 6 Blast Furnace for relighting is very sound.

The stock house arrangement of No 6 Blast Furnace was inovative in that it provided excellent ability to separate both sinter and coke into small and large size fractions. This allows a higher voidage of the burdencolumn to be achieved after charging to the furnace. In turn, this increases permeability to the furnace gas stream with consequent benefits for productivity and fuel efficiency. These improvements were also enhanced by the increased intimacy of mixing of the ferrous burden materals within each charged batch. Again this was the result of inovative design. These features will all be retained.

At the furnace top , where raw materials are actualy charged to the furnace an inovative arrangement of the bins that receive and discharge the prepared ores and coke allowed excellent circumfrential consistency of placement at the furnace stockline after discharge. In addition to further promoting productivity, fuel efficiency and process consistency this feature is the best possible means to promote longevity of the furnace cooling system.

The above stockhouse and furnace top features are not available at No 5 Blast Furnace. At No 6 Blast Furnace they will undoubtedly be combined with copper cooling staves in appropriate levels of the furnace lining. Bluescope haad considerable difficulties with copper staves during the early years of the current campaign at No 5 Blast Furnace but their understanding of this technology is now very well advanced.

The combination of such excellence in the design of the stock house and furnace top with copper staves will maximise the ability of the relined No 6 Blast Furnace to achieve a safe, productive, efficient and long campaign. A campaign life of greater than twenty years is quite realistic and this will secure local steelmaking well into the future. This will hopefully also allow proper opportunity for the assessment of alternate or breakthrough technologies for future adoption.

In addition to these issues which are of paramount importance to the performance of the furnace proper, I am aware of a number of significant improvements that will be made to promote environmental performance and reduce greenhouse gas intensity of the process.

The provision of a top gas energy recovery turbine will rectify an omission made in 1996 due to budgetary constraints. This is established technology and prevents minimal risk while also improving energy efficiency and also improved top pressure control for the process. Escape of small volumes of blast furnace gas to the atmosphere will also be eliminated by replacing the existing duscatcher with updated technology.

The adoption of waste heat recovery on the hot blast stove system will allow considerable reduction in blast furnace and especially coke ovens gas requirements and result in reduced release of both greenhouse gases and waste heat to the environment.

Greenhouse gas intensity of the blast furnace process can be reduced by increasing the proportion of high hydrogen content gases in the fuels that are injected at the furnace tuyeres. Theoretically, pure hydrogen would be best but this technology is presently unproven at rates required for realistic practicality. The challenges associated are related both to safety specifics and to the esoteric matter of process flame temperature.

Coke ovens gas contains both significant hydrogen (> 50%) and methane - as such it is environmentally more attractive for injection use than natural gas (methane only). Bluescope has past experience with the injection of compressed coke ovens gas at No 5 Blast Furnace on a previous campaign and their proposal to inject both coke ovens gas and coal is very sound. The ability to addmix hydrogen to the coke oven gas should be possible and can be assessed as a separate matter if appropriate controls are proven viable.

I believe that the reline scope proposed by Bluescope is excellent and I strongly commend its approval . It will provide a highly productive and fuel efficient furnace to consistently produce low cost mot metal for downstream steelmaking processing. I also believe that the proposal has selected the most appropriate combination of technologies currently available for adoption in the Illawarra and will secure the steelmaking industry long into the future.

I am delighted to endorse the scope.

R.J. Nightingale B.Met., M.Sc., PhD.

I have lectured at the McMaster University Ironmaking Course in 2012, 2014, 2016 ,2018 and will again 2022. I lecture on the subjects of Blast Furnace Reactions and on Blast Furnace Control - Measurement, Control and Strategy.

I have also lectured with the German Stahl Institute in 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021 on Blast Furnace Hearth Dynamics.

I am also the recipient of the Josef S Kapitan Award from the American Iron and Steel Society in 1999 and the Thomas L Joseph Award from The AIST in 2016.