ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe AG has placed an order with Siemens VAI Metals Technologies to upgrade the casting rolling mill at the Duisburg Bruckhausen in Germany location with new basic automation and technology packages, bringing the plant automation to the current state of the art.

The project with a volume of several million euro is to be completed in the spring of 2013. Breakout prevention and closed loop mold level control will already be in use as from the end of 2011.

In addition to having a hot wide strip mill, the ThyssenKrupp Steel plant in Bruckhausen also operates a casting rolling mill. There, the liquid steel is first cast into thin slabs of 48 to 63 millimeters in thickness and up to 1,600 millimeters width and is then rolled out inline to strips measuring 1.0 to 12.7 millimeters thick.

Siemens is equipping the casting rolling mill with a series of state of the art technological controls. These will include Mold Expert breakout prevention and LevCon mold level control, which are both already to be implemented by the end of 2011. The scope of delivery will also include DynaFlex oscillator control for flexible adjustment of the oscillation parameters, optimized DynaWidth control of the adjustable mold for online modification of slab width, ASTC (Automatic Strand Taper Control) segment adjusting as well as bender and straightener adjustment.

Moreover, the casting roll mill will be equipped with a new Simatic PCS7 basic automation system including a visualization system. Following completion of the modernization process, ThyssenKrupp Steel will have an integrated state of the art automation solution. The automation packages and the technological controls will be installed and commissioned without additional down times.

At ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe's Duisburg Bruckhausen factory, Siemens is currently also involved in a comprehensive modernization of hot strip rolling mill 1. The aim of this project is a further improvement of product quality and an extension of the product mix.