December 04, 2008
OMK’s Vyksa plant to install a 1.2 million tonne plate mill
It is reported that Russian pipe major OMK’s Vyksa Steel has placed an order with SMS Demag for the supply of a heavy plate mill and will be joining the ranks of the plate producers when the new rolling mill is commissioned. The new mill is to be installed at Vyksa, an industrial town in the region of Nizhny Novgorod, about 250 kilometers to the east of Moscow and will go into operation in mid 2010.
The annual capacity of the single stand rolling mill is 1.2 million tonnes of finished plates in widths between 900mm and 4,800 mm and thicknesses from 7mm to 150 mm. The maximum plate weight is 40 tonnes. The mill will allow the production of plates up to the strength class X 120.
With this plate mill, Vyksa Steel will be able to produce plates required for manufacturing high strength oil and gas pipe lines as well as serve mechanical engineering, shipbuilding and construction sector.
SMS Demag’s scope of supply comprises the whole of the mechanical equipment, with two slab furnaces, the mill stand, the plate cooling system, the hot plate leveler, the cooling beds, the shearing line and the plate finishing line with a 9/5 cold plate leveler. SMS will also supply the complete electrical system, the drive engineering and all of the automation systems including Level 3 production planning system Level.
For the production of plates of high strength tube steels, the mill possesses a mill stand with a rolling force of 120 MN and CVC plus® technology as well as a newly developed two part spray cooling system. The front part of the cooling system includes an extremely efficient high pressure station combined with special cooling headers. This allows it to achieve the very high cooling rates required for direct quenching out of the rolling heat. Pinch rolls ensure good plate flatness even at high cooling rates. The spray cooling in the rear section operates at a lower pressure, and this section is therefore used for accelerated cooling (ACC). A pre-leveler is installed in the entry section of the plate cooling system.
