National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur is celebrating its 57th Foundation Day
The foundation stone of National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML) was laid on 21.11.1946 by the first and only Governor General of independent India, Shri C.Rajagopalachari. The laboratory was formally inaugurated and dedicated to the
nation on the 26th of November, 1950 by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The laboratory formed part of the great plan, which Sir Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar visualised in 1940, for providing India with a network of research institutes capable of taking the country forward in the Science & Technology. The National Metallurgical Laboratory was the third in the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) family of 38 laboratories.
Under the CSIR Network Programme, NML has been participating and contributing in 63 ongoing activities, within the 14 major Network projects relevant to the laboratory. These projects include diverse areas, like - Technology for Engineering Critical Assessment (TECA); Bioprocessing and bioremediation of effluents and acid mine drainage; New Building construction materials; Computational mechanics; Developing capabilities in advanced manufacturing technologies; Development of specialized aerospace materials; Custom tailored special materials; Coal Resource Quality Assessment; Capacity building for coastal placer mineral mining; Environment friendly leather processing; Certified reference materials; Industrial waste minimization; and Design analysis of special structures including bridges. Additionally, NML has also been participating in two projects relating to Information Science and products with NISCAIR as the nodal agency and NML as one of the participating members. These are (1) National Science Digital Library, and (2) e-Journal Consortium. All the activities under these network projects are progressing as per schedule.
The two NML Mega projects - (1) Maximizing blast furnace productivity with Indian iron ore with the financial support of Ministry of Steel, Govt. of India, under the Steel Development Fund scheme, and (2) Processing of Polymetallic Sea Nodules sponsored by Department of Ocean Development, Govt. of India. Under the Blast Furnace Project, technology for improved operation of blast furnaces has been developed through comprehensive process models, validation of models using state of the art experimental facilities and their integration in a real-time process simulator (RTPS). The models and the RTPS have been tuned and installed at Bokaro Steel Limited (BSL), BF No. 5. In the DoD sponsored project on Polymetallic sea nodules, the current focus is on the utilization of leach residue generated in the processing of sea nodules. A novel two stage smelting process has been developed to recover manganese as ferro-silico-manganese. A pilot plant to process 350 kg/day leached residue has been set up.
(photo: Department of Science & tech. Secretary T.Ramasami & NML Director Surya Pratap Mehrotra at the foundation day celebrations)
