RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, Aug.31: In a major indigenous drive of import substitution, a SAIL team of Bokaro Steel Limited (BSL) & RDCIS, Ranchi with the active support of the marketing wing succeeded in developing a special grade of galvanized sheets for robust and high life storage grain silos.
These Silos are used for the storage of bulk grains for precluding weathering effects and wastages.
Hitherto the vendors of Food Corporation of India (FCI) imported this special steel from other countries. Recently, FCI under the aegis of PPP mode encouraged private participation for constructing automated large silos with capacities greater than 10000 tonnes. This product shall fill up this niche demand of the country.
This quantum jump in the quality of Silos owes to the challenge in meeting stringent specifications in terms of yield strength (minimum 350 MPa) with a 16% elongation factor coupled with sufficient coating of 450 GSM & above. Also, the engineers designed this special steel with a unique chemical composition. During trials, optimizations of parameters were done successfully for increasing the cold reduction, annealing temperature and line speed during the coating process.
On this occasion, N. Banerjee, ED, RDCIS congratulated the RDCIS team led by N. Mondal, along with the team of BSL for this new make in India initiative.
In his message, he stated “This product shall boost storage facilities not only at procurement and distribution centers, but also at farm locations. As the Government has equated the status of Silos with that of Mandis, high volume Silos with high lifespan are necessitated for achieving the storage target of 10MT as planned by Govt.”.
This product shall also facilitate the creation of large-capacity ‘Mother Silo’, which may be connected with special rail wagons for onward distribution of food grains for which BSL has already produced around 300 Tonnes.
