Assessment of the environmental risks of a foundry shop when making steel for the production of machinery and mining equipment

Abstract

An analysis of new legislative documents on the management, methods, and technologies for assessing environmental risks was performed. The risk assessment algorithm was applied to the foundry shop of a metallurgical enterprise (Proizvodstvennaya Kompaniya) in the city of Irkutsk. The technological process of casting and forming steel products was investigated with a detailed analysis of emissions into the environment for each technological stage. The measures currently used by the enterprise to reduce its negative impact are discussed. When identifying the sources of hazards in the foundry, numerous violations of environmental legislation were identified. A register of environmental hazards with a ranking of consequences was compiled, which showed that the most severe hazard to the ecosystem would occur in the event of a global fire at the foundry shop with a possibly fatal outcome. The scenario of an electric arc furnace accident with the release of pollutants into the atmosphere was calculated as the most negative event. To assess the risks of possible hypothetical accidents, the event tree analysis, failure mode and effects analysis, and failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis methods, which are semiquantitative and suitable for primary risk assessment, were used. The calculation of the probability and criticality of failures of electric arc furnace elements showed that, if the cooling system fails, then the furnace will explode and the foundry shop will catch fire, threatening the lives of workers and emitting a large amount of pollutants into the atmosphere. Equipment modernization was proposed as corrective measures taking into account the best available technologies.