Rourkela Steel Plant(RSP) is an integrated steel plant of Steel Authority of India Limited located in Rourkela set up in the year of 1958. It is the first Public Sector Integrated Steel Plant to be set up in India. The blast furnace was inaugurated by the President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad. The Republic of Germany provided technical know how for the construction of the steel plant. German metallurgical firms Mannesmann, Krupp, Demag, Siemens and Voestalpine[1] provided machinery and consultancy to the plant among others. Rourkela Steel Plant was the first steel plant in Asia to utilize the LD (Linz-Donawitz) proc ess of steel-making. Rourkela Steel Plant also has an associated Fertilizer Plant that produces nitrogeneous fertilizers using ammonia feedstock (from its coke oven plant).
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A pipe plant and special plate plant were set up during the 1970s for production of ERW pipes and steel plates for defense requirements. NSPCL[2] , a joint venture company of NTPC Limited and SAIL, set up a captive power plant of 120 MW capacity to be self-sufficient.
Rourkela Steel Plant undertook a modernization program in 1988 with an outlay of INR 4500 crores. This revamped the process of supply of raw materials, new oxygen plant, improved techniques in blast furnaces, selling of dolomite plant, cast house, slag granulation plant, supply of raw materials sintering plants and coal handling plants among others.
Following the modernization RSP became the first SAIL plant to have adopted continuous casting route for all its hot metal production. It is also the first Indian steel plant to have adopted external desulfurisation of hot metal by the calcium carbide injection process.[3][4]
Steel Authority of India plans to invest for its capacity expansion in its existing major plants. So Rourkela Steel Plant on modernization and expansion project process. expected to be 4.5 MT steel plant by the year 2013, on existing 2.2 MT. SAIL projected to take SAIL’s hot metal production capacity to a level of 23.5 million tonnes by 2012-13.
SAIL's Rourkela Steel Plant produces various products. Plate Mill Plates, HR Plates, HR Coils, ERW Pipes, SW Pipes, CR Sheets & Coils, Galvanized Sheets, Electrolytic Tin-Plates Silicon Steel Sheets Heavy & Chequered Plates, Electrical Steel (CRNO/CRGO), GP Coils & Sheets/GC Sheets [5] . The Fertilizer Plant produces calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) fertilizer marketed under the brandname "Sona” (gold), bitumen and benzol among others. [6]