What is it that I see?

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There are a number of things you can see in the area

A flare

The production of iron, steel and coke causes production gases. These gases are carefully collected and reused as an alternative to natural gas. Some of our production gas goes to Vattenfall, which uses it to generate electricity. Occasionally, there is more gas than Vattenfall and we can process. The surplus is stored in gas containers on our site. When these are full, flaring is the only solution. We do everything we can to minimise this.

Short-term clouds of smoke above the Coking Plants

Coke is coal from which contaminants have been removed through heat treatment. This produces a pure fuel. The emission of coke involves the emission of dust from the coke ovens. This passes through exhaust fans and two filter installations before being collected in three suction trucks. The filter installations and suction trucks are environmental installations that are regularly inspected and overhauled. Maintenance has a 13-week cycle. On days when maintenance or inspection takes place, short-term clouds of smoke can be seen at Coking Plants 1 and 2.

If additional maintenance is required, production is halted. We report all scheduled maintenance work to the Environment Agency for the North Sea Canal Area. Of course we try to keep maintenance or malfunctions as brief as possible. For the coming period, inspection and/or maintenance is scheduled in weeks 10-14-18-22-26-30-34-38-42-46.

There are a number of things you can see in the area.

A brown cloud of smoke above the BOS Plant

The BOS Plant has three converters. These are large drums we fill with red-hot pig iron. When oxygen is blown in, a chemical reaction takes place. That is how we make steel from pig iron. This produces a very foamy layer called slag. Sometimes that layer boils over, we call this slopping. This may cause a brown cloud of smoke above the BOS Plant. If this happens, we act very quickly. We are reducing roof emissions at the BOS Plant by means of an additional exhaust system, which is part of the Roadmap Plus.

A brown cloud above the Blast Furnaces

A brown cloud can also come out of the taphole of the Blast Furnaces. Such a cloud may occasionally appear when one of the tapholes opens or closes. We spray with water mist at the taphole to limit this effect. As part of the Roadmap Plus we reduce roof emissions by closing the tapholes more quickly. In addition, a new type of exhaust hood will be installed over the tapholes in both Blast Furnaces.

A cloud of steam at the Coking Plant

In the Coking Plant, we cook coal to make coke. We need coke to make pig iron. When the coke is 'done', we push it out of the ovens. The cooked coke is collected and doused with water from the extinguishing tower. This creates a visible cloud of steam. This is a standard process that takes place every 15 minutes.