On the Prospects for the Development of the Metallurgical and Chemical Industries in Tomsk Oblast

I. V. Gebler, S. I. Smolyaninov

One of the most important conditions for the successful solution of the tasks set by the Party in the field of metallurgy is the creation, in the east of the country, of the USSR’s third metallurgical base. The third metallurgical base of the USSR will encompass the ferrous metallurgy of Kazakhstan, the Far East, Central Asia, and Siberia. Siberia’s overall resources are great; however, in order to turn these possibilities into reality, an enormous amount of work must be carried out to prepare raw-material and fuel bases.

A decisive role in supplying the USSR’s metallurgical base with iron ore may be played by the West Siberian iron-ore basin, located within the territory of Tomsk Oblast.

In the days preceding the Congress, public attention was once again drawn to the West Siberian iron-ore basin. In Pravda of October 13, a group of leading scientists of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences published the article “The Treasures of Bakchar,” which spoke of the utterly inadmissible indifference toward these valuable riches on the part of certain central organizations. The authors of the article pointed to the indisputable advantages of the iron ores of the Bakchar deposit in comparison with other deposits of this raw material in Siberia.

In the future industrial development of the iron ores of Tomsk Oblast, the problem of metallurgical fuel is a very serious one. Modern blast furnaces operate on coke obtained from special grades of hard coal, the so-called coking coals. Siberia possesses large fuel and energy resources. Coal reserves here exceed 750 billion tons. However, supplying metallurgy with coals suitable for coking encounters great difficulties. The main supplier of these coals for the metallurgy of the Urals and Siberia has been and remains the Kuznetsk coal basin; however, its reserves in Kuzbass down to a depth of 300 m amount to less than 3% of total fuel reserves. Thus, despite its relative proximity, the Kuznetsk coal basin can hardly be regarded as the future fuel base for the development of the iron ores of Tomsk Oblast. Even now there is a shortage of coking coals in the supply of the metallurgical plants of Siberia. The situation will become still more acute with the commissioning of the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant and the Taishet Plant [1].

No industrial reserves of hard coal are known on the territory of Tomsk Oblast. However, Tomsk Oblast possesses some of the richest peat deposits in the world, whose reserves in the oblast amount to no less than 30 billion tons, and in Western Siberia to 70 billion tons.

Peat in the Soviet Union is widely used in the national economy. The Seven-Year Plan provides for the creation and introduction of equipment for obtaining coke, semicoke, and thermal briquettes from peat for the metallurgical industry; for completing work on the energy-technological utilization of peat; and for introducing the gasification of milled and granulated peat with the production of gas for chemical syntheses and for energy and domestic use in areas distant from natural-gas mains.

Implementation of the principal tasks planned will make it possible by 1965 to develop the comprehensive utilization of peat and to expand the sphere of its application, and to create new production facilities for obtaining metallurgical fuel, chemical products, concentrated fertilizers, etc., from peat.

A technical conference held in July 1958 on the prospects for using peat in the metallurgical industry, with the simultaneous production of gas and chemical products, emphasized the urgency of this question and outlined a number of measures for solving the task that had been set [2].

Serious attention to the comprehensive utilization of peat resources is also being paid by some Councils of the National Economy. Thus, in 1959 the Novosibirsk Council of the National Economy convened a conference that considered, in particular, the possibility of organizing in Novosibirsk Oblast an energy–gas-chemical combine on the basis of the Vasyugan peat massif [3].

The comprehensive utilization of peat should be of very great importance for the national economy of Siberia. First, it will make it possible to create the necessary raw-material resources for the development of the production of synthetic materials: synthetic rubber, synthetic fiber, plastics, detergents, dyes, medicinal and aromatic substances, etc. Second, the comprehensive utilization of peat can solve the problem of gas supply for the cities and industrial centers of Siberia.

Gas is now acquiring great importance as an energy and technological fuel. Gas is not only one of the best and cheapest types of fuel; it is also a very effective type of raw material for the chemical industry. The most advantageous is the use of natural gas, but in Siberia solid combustible minerals may serve as a cheap raw-material base for solving the problem of gas supply. At present, various processes for the gasification of solid fuels to obtain manufactured gases are used in the Soviet Union. However, the technical and economic indicators of these processes still lag far behind the extraction of natural gas. A radical improvement in the economics of manufactured-gas production is possible through a transition to comprehensive processes for processing solid fuels, ensuring the rational use of all component parts of the fuel, i.e., the simultaneous production of gas or energy fuel and chemical products.

In Tomsk Oblast, a comprehensive solution of all the indicated tasks is possible through the implementation of the so-called gas-blast-furnace process. In this process, air-dry peat that has not been subjected to coking is used as blast-furnace fuel instead of hard-coal coke. The coking process is combined with the process of smelting pig iron. In addition to pig iron and slag, this yields, in addition, ...

greater than in an ordinary blast furnace, a quantity of gas with high calorific value, as well as peat tar—a valuable raw material for the organic-synthesis industry. The idea of the gas-blast process was first advanced in the 1930s by engineer P. M. Vavilov and, up to the present time, has found and continues to find broad support from leading Soviet scientists: Academicians M. A. Pavlov, E. V. Britske, I. P. Bardin, N. P. Chizhevsky, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences A. B. Chernyshev, V. E. Rakovsky, and others [4, 5, 6, 7].

Work in this direction is being carried out by the staff of the Department of Chemical Technology of Fuels of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute and by the problem laboratory for the comprehensive utilization of peat.

The line of work envisages the use of air-dry peat as blast-furnace fuel in the form of so-called fuel-and-flux materials, i.e., agglomerates containing fuel (peat), iron ore, and fluxes in the proportions required for blast-furnace smelting. Fuel-and-flux materials can also be obtained from milled peat by thermal briquetting. This path corresponds to the prospects for the development of ferrous metallurgy over the next 20 years. Thus, in an article by the head of a sector of Gipromez, Comrade Kostenetsky, published in Ekonomicheskaya gazeta, it is emphasized that, for the creation of the automated metallurgical plant of the future, the preparation of the burden for blast-furnace smelting—in particular, the use of the so-called monoburden (i.e., fuel-and-flux materials)—is of extremely serious importance. This is necessary to ensure automation of blast-furnace charging. In addition, a homogeneous material creates better conditions for the movement of gases in the blast-furnace shaft.

Great importance is currently attached in metallurgy to introducing converters into steelmaking production in place of the widely used open-hearth furnaces. This circumstance was noted by N. S. Khrushchev in the report of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the Twenty-Second Party Congress. Oxygen-converter production makes it possible sharply to increase steel output with substantially lower capital expenditures and higher labor productivity. The characteristics of the ores of the Bakchar deposit, which contain a considerable amount of phosphorus, make it possible effectively to use converters for steel smelting in the well-known Thomas process of steel production. At the same time, Thomas slag is obtained as a production waste—a splendid fertilizer that is urgently needed by the agriculture of Siberia. And not only Siberia. The rates of growth in the production of phosphorus fertilizers in our country still do not meet the growing needs of agriculture.

Incidentally, regarding slags. In blast-furnace production, the amount of slag obtained often exceeds half the amount of pig iron produced. Slags can be used for the production of a wide range of building materials, from cement to rolled products, stone castings, and so on. And in the days preceding the congress, scientists and engineers of the Department of Glass of the Mendeleev Moscow Chemical-Technological Institute and of the Konstantinovka plant “Avtosteklo,” under the direction of Professor I. Kitaygorodsky, were the first in the world to propose obtaining, from fiery-liquid metallurgical slags, glass-ceramics, as well as foam glass, fiberglass materials, and colored glasses. The use of metallurgical slags to obtain glass-ceramics is especially promising (glass-ceramic is a microcrystalline material based on glass). Glass-ceramics possess high mechanical strength (up to 1,200 kg/cm³ in ...

bending strength), and in fracture resistance, chemical and thermal stability they surpass stone castings.

Peat as a metallurgical fuel may be used in the form of peat coke, thermobriquettes, or fuel-and-flux materials in the blast-furnace process. It can be used for the direct reduction of iron. In addition, peat semicoke is a good fuel for ore agglomeration or may be used as a lean additive in obtaining metallurgical coke from hard coals.

At the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, studies have been carried out on obtaining metallurgical fuel and fuel-and-flux materials on the basis of machine-molded and milled peat. The technology for obtaining fuel-and-flux materials will be tested this year at a peat enterprise of the Middle Urals Sovnarkhoz.

Particularly attractive prospects for the integrated solution of a number of problems in the development of the national economy of Western Siberia may be opened by organizing a chemical-metallurgical combine on the basis of peat and the iron ores of the Bakchar deposit. The chemical-metallurgical process may be carried out using air-dry (not subjected to coking) peat, thermobriquettes, or fuel-and-flux materials in a blast furnace. In this case there is no need to build coke batteries, and in addition to pig iron and slag it is possible to obtain a significant quantity of high-calorific blast-furnace gas and peat tar.

According to our calculations, a metallurgical combine with a capacity of 3 million tons of pig iron per year will require 10–15 million tons of air-dry peat. Along with the pig iron, 15–22 billion m³ of gas with a calorific value of 1500 kcal/m³ will be produced. With oxygen blowing and washing out of carbon dioxide, the calorific value of the gas will be 4000 kcal/m³. In addition, 500–700 thousand tons of peat tar can be obtained. Thus the problem of gas supply for the cities and industrial centers of Western Siberia can be solved, and on the basis of blast-furnace gas and peat tar the organic-synthesis industry can be developed.

From 3 million tons of pig iron it is possible to obtain 2.7 million tons of steel, 0.10–0.15 million tons of vanadium, and 0.6 million tons of Thomas slag.

For the gas supply of Western Siberia, only slightly more than half of the total quantity of gas obtained is required. The remaining gas may be directed to organic synthesis, yielding gasoline, kerosene, acids, alcohols, synthetic ceresin, and raw materials for synthetic detergents. Other possible uses of the gas include the synthesis of ammonia, the direct reduction of iron, or the production of electric power.

Chemical processing of peat tar can yield foundry binder, resole resins, carbolineum, acetic acid, ammonium sulfate, phenols, and benzene.

The organization of a chemical-technological combine along the proposed lines opens up great possibilities for the chemicalization of agriculture. The above-mentioned quantity of Thomas slag (0.6 million tons) is sufficient to fertilize 2 million ha of sown land. Thomas slag is several times cheaper than other mineral fertilizers; it is not harmed by precipitation during storage. According to data from the Ukrainian Institute of Agriculture, the application of Thomas slag increases the yield of corn by 5% per hectare, winter wheat by 6%, and sugar beet by thirty percent.

The integrated chemical-metallurgical process based on peat opens up great possibilities for the production of combined peat-ammonia or complete peat-mineral fertilizers.

With the option of processing part of the blast-furnace gas into synthetic ammonia, it is possible to produce 1–1.5 million tons per year of nitrogen fertilizers.

On the wastes of peat enterprises it may be possible to set up the production of highly effective humic fertilizers and plant-growth stimulants. The acidic soils of Western Siberia make it possible successfully to use blast-furnace slags as fertilizers as well.

Chemical processing of peat tar will make it possible to organize the production of herbicides, toxic chemicals, antiseptics, etc.

A preliminary assessment of economic efficiency shows that such a process yields products competitive with natural gas and petroleum.

Conclusions

1. The comprehensive use of peat in the gas–blast-furnace process will make it possible to develop a major metallurgical and chemical industry in Tomsk Oblast.

2. A preliminary assessment of the economic efficiency of the gas–blast-furnace process using peat indicates its advantages in comparison with the modern blast-furnace process using hard-coal coke.

References

1. I. V. Gebler, N. M. Smolyaninov. The Problem of Fuel for the Metallurgy of Iron Ores in Tomsk Oblast. Tomsk State University Press, 1959.

2. A. G. Borts. Conference on the use of peat in the metallurgical industry. Coke and Chemistry, No. 8, pp. 56–58, 1959.

3. Prospects for the comprehensive use of peat resources of the Novosibirsk Economic Region. Published by the Central Bureau of Technical Information of the Novosibirsk Sovnarkhoz, Novosibirsk, 1959.

4. A. P. Vavilov. A Forgotten Problem (the problem of the comprehensive use of peat in blast furnaces). VNITO Metallurgists Press, 1939.

5. V. V. Kondakov. Blast-furnace smelting on peat and oxygen blast. Kislorod, No. 1, pp. 35–43, 1945.

6. A. K. Fanbulov. Pig-iron smelting in cupola furnaces on peat. Peat Industry, No. 5, pp. 28–32, 1957.

7. B. D. Sysoev. The use of peat for gasification by applying it as a metallurgical fuel. Peat Industry, No. 1, pp. 13–15, 1959.