Recently, Elkem Carbon has completed the project of zero sulfide emission of calcination furnaces at Fiskaa plant. Located at Kristiansand in the south of Norway, the project had an investment budget of NOK 141 million and was co-funded by the Norwegian Environment Fund and Elkem. As scheduled, the new energy recovery and sulphur treatment facility will be used at the project.
The Fiskaa plant has a total of 13 furnaces, three of which are used to process petroleum coke, and the emission of carbon dioxide accounts for 60% of the total emission of the plant. The project was limited to these three furnaces. The new facility will reduce the sulphur emissions from the three rebuilt by 98%, thereby reducing the total sulphur emission of Elkem Carbon by 70%.
In addition, the new facility helped Elkem Carbon significantly reduce the energy consumption. Pitch is the main raw material that Elkem Carbon uses to produce electrode paste. The equipment installed by the project will lead furnace off-gas through a heat exchanger to heat up oil. The hot oil is used to keep pitch in a liquid state during storage and hot enough to flow through the different production processes. Excess heat will also be used to dry another raw material, anthracite, before the calcination process, so that less energy is required to remove moisture during this part of the process. In addition to the use in the production process, there will also be a substantial amount of heat energy for heat for offices and other buildings in Elkem’s industrial area at Fiskaa in Kristiansand.
“We are very happy to finalize the project. It is great to see that we will be able to save so much energy. This is a big day for Elkem and a big step towards a greener industry”, said Odd Olsen, Plant manager at Carbon Fiskaa.