An international two-day conference on Steelmaking and Casting – Sustainable Technology and Practices, organised by the Indian Institute of Metals, Jamshedpur chapter in association with Tata Steel and CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory kicked off on Thursday.
The aim of the conference is to provide a common platform to industry leaders, researchers and technologists to discuss the challenges steelmaking industry is facing at this moment and to establish a network among them to share their views on the modern technological developments and research findings to address these challenges.
Akshay Khullar, chairman of the conference organising committee, explained how the theme of the conference was conceptualised considering the relevance of the subject.
A.K. Rastogi, chairman, Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board, was the chief guest of the inaugural function. He said that this conference is the first of its kind in eastern India and expressed his willingness to support new initiatives by the steel industry that will address environmental issues.
Dr I Chattoraj, Director CSIR-NML was present in the function as guest of honour. In his speech, Dr Chattoraj mentioned about the history of the threat that steelmaking industry has been facing due to introduction of new alternative materials and emphasized on the look-out of alternative energy resources.
Debashish Bhattacharjee, vice president (technology and new materials business),Tata Steel, delivered a speech as guest of honour of the event where he mentioned that steelmaking is relatively a recent technology as compared to ironmaking and elaborated about the evolution of the new technologies in steelmaking like BOF, EAF etc. over time.
Sudhansu Pathak, Vice President (Steel Manufacturing), Tata Steel, was present as the patron of the conference on the dais. He emphasized on the importance of introducing digital and analytics which will give new insights to the steel making processes.
The programme concluded with presentation of mementos to the dignitaries and extending vote of thanks by the conference convener P P Sahoo.
At the end of the inaugural function, a plenary session was organized. Dr. Sarif Jahanshahi from Meta Logical Solutions, Australia, presented a paper on “Assessment of the Use of Biomass/Designer Chars for Low Emission Steel production” which received a big applause from the audience.
