The Chinese steel producer Shougang Group Co has awarded Siemens VAI Metals Technologies a contract for the supply of a continuous casting machine capable of casting slabs in thicknesses ranging from 250mm to 400mm. Shougang will thus be the first steel producer in China capable of casting ultra thick slabs. The caster will be installed in the existing steel works Qinhuangdao ShouQin Metals Material Co Ltd located in the coastal city of Qinhuangdao in Hebei Province.
The slabs will be rolled to plates in an existing plate mill for use in the shipbuilding and petroleum industries. Plant start-up is scheduled for June 2010.
For this steel works Siemens VAI Metals Technologies will supply engineering and key equipment for a continuous slab casting machine capable of casting up to 1.1 million tonnes of steel per year. Slabs will be cast in thicknesses ranging from 250mm to 400mm and in widths from 1,600mm to 2,400mm. The casting-bow radius will be eleven meters and the metallurgical length 45 meters. To further improve the internal quality of the cast product, the vertical length of the caster will be increased by approximately one meter in comparison with conventional Siemens VAI caster designs to facilitate the flotation and removal of steel inclusions. Liquid-core unbending of 400mm thick slabs will be performed. This will enable higher casting speeds to be achieved up to 0.7 meters per minute and thus a higher caster output in comparison with solid core unbending solutions.
The Siemens scope of supply for this caster project includes detail engineering for core systems and equipment, basic engineering for the run-out area and maintenance facilities, Level 1 and Level 2 automation in addition to a wide range of technological packages. In the caster head area the technological packages include LevCon 2 for improved automatic mold level control, MoldExpert 2 for enhanced strand break out protection, SmartMold cassette-type molds which allow worn copper plates to be quickly replaced and DynaWidth for the dynamic and on line adjustment of the mold width. Flexible and on line adjustment of the mold oscillation parameters will be possible with DynaFlex. The technological packages for the strand-guide system include the remotely adjustable SmartBender and the subsequent SmartSegment caster segments, which, in combination with DynaGap automation, will enable the slab thickness to be quickly and fully automatically adjusted.
