Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK) is actively integrating digital systems for monitoring, analysing and managing environmental indicators to reduce the man-made impact on the environment. The Company's experience in automating environmental control was presented by MMK's Chief Environmental Specialist, Igor Burmistrov, at the V Open Forum on Ecology and Conservation of Water Bodies held in Chelyabinsk.
The core element of the digital ecosystem under development at the plant is a 24/7 environmental control room, commissioned in 2023. It consolidates data on technological process parameters, outputs from automated control systems and air monitoring results. Among other inputs, the control room receives footage from cameras installed in production shops, with machine-vision technology autonomously detecting unorganised emissions from the oxygen-converter, electric steelmaking, blast-furnace and coke-production units.
Deviations recorded by the system are routed to responsible division personnel for prompt root-cause analysis and remedial action. This approach has already enabled MMK to achieve a significant reduction in unorganised emissions and to shorten response times to failures in process and environmental-protection equipment.
Automated emission measurement systems are an important component of environmental control.
"In 2025, MMK became the first among Russian metallurgical companies to launch the collection and verification of data from 35 automated systems, which are then transmitted online to Russia's federal environmental oversight agency (Rosprirodnadzor)," Igor Burmistrov said. "These systems provide the coverage of pollutant emissions required by law at 70%. This year, we plan to equip an additional six emission sources with monitoring systems."
To enable rapid assessment of the impact from different pollution sources, the data are integrated into a mathematical dispersion model. In 2025, MMK together with South Ural State University continued to develop this digital tool to account for vehicle emissions under varying road loads. The programme comprises a real-time traffic monitoring system that uses cameras at 26 intersections, with monitoring covering around 55% of key streets in Magnitogorsk. The project will ultimately yield a dynamic model that accounts for the full volume of vehicular emissions and their actual contribution to urban pollution. MMK specialists currently estimate that contribution at 45%. During peak hours, pollutant concentrations from road traffic rise by an additional 30%, and by up to 50% under adverse meteorological conditions.