Fault brings down Sterllite's Tuticorin acids facility

24 November 2008 15:47  [Source: ICIS news]

NEW DELHI (ICIS news)--India’s Sterlite Industries (India) Limited (SIIL) experienced a power failure on 19 November in the main cooling tower of its copper-smelting and acids complex in Tuticorin, in Tamil Nadu state, it said on Monday..

The company said “there has been a breakdown at its operating plant” but it was making efforts to assess the extent of damage and rectify the situation, according to a brief disclosure filed with stock exchanges.

Officials from SIIL’s Tuticorin facility and its Mumbai office would not say whether production of copper and the by-product sulphuric acid had been suspended, or whether the fault had also affected its downstream phosphoric acid plant.

SIIL is India’s second largest phosphoric acid producer and its third largest maker producer of sulphuric acid.

The company currently produces sulphuric acid from sulphur dioxide released during the smelting of imported copper concentrates.

The Tuticorin complex has the capacity to produce 1.3m tonnes/year of sulphuric acid and 250,000 tonnes/year of phosphoric acid.

The plant also produces hydrofluosilicic acid as a by-product of SIIL’s phosphoric acid plant. SIIL is a subsidiary of the UK-based metals major Vedanta Resources.

For more on sulphuric acid visit ICIS chemical intelligence
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By: Naresh Minocha
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