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Siemens to Supply BOF, Degasser, Caster for Posco’s New Greenfield Plant
06/27/2008 - Posco contracts Siemens VAI Metals Technologies to provide engineering and key equipment for a 250-tonne LD converter and off-gas system, an RH degassing plant, and a 2-strand slab caster with a nominal casting capacity of 3.2 million tonnes of slabs per year.
Siemens VAI Metals Technologies has received an order from Korean steel producer Posco to provide engineering and key equipment for a 250-tonne LD converter and off-gas system, an RH degassing plant, and a 2-strand slab caster for the company’s new green-field steel mill at its production site in Gwangyang, Korea.
The project scope includes engineering and supply of key components, systems and technological packages for an LD (BOF) converter, RH degassing plant and slab caster. The project will be implemented in consortium with Posco E&C (Posco Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd.) and Poscon, an affiliated company of the automation division of Posco.
The new steelmaking and plate-rolling facilities at the Gwangyang steelworks will allow the company to respond to the growing demand for plates. The facility will process a total of 3.2 million tonnes of slabs, comprising low-, medium- and high-carbon steel grades as well as alloyed steel grades, rolling them into high-quality plates for use in shipbuilding, boiler and pressure vessels, and pipe production.
Siemens Metals Technologies will provide engineering and key equipment for a 250-tonne LD (BOF) converter and off-gas system, an RH degassing plant and a 2-strand slab caster with a nominal casting capacity of 3.2 million tonnes of slabs per year. The converter supply includes the maintenance-free VAI-Con Link suspension system, converter-tilting unit with drive, an oxygen valve stand for the LD lances, and slag stoppers for minimized slag carryover during tapping.
Siemens will also design a dry-type converter-off-gas-treatment system to cool and dedust up to 200,000 m3 of off-gas per hour in accordance with the strict Korean environmental standards. It includes an evaporation cooler, a Siemens four-field, round-type ESP (electrostatic precipitator), ID (induced draught) fan, a gas-switchover station for directing the treated converter off-gas either to the flare or to intermediate storage in a gasholder for subsequent heating applications or for the generation of electricity. The off-gas-treatment plant will feature a plate-type cooling system that will ensure a high cooling efficiency during peak converter-off-gas emissions.
The 250-tonne RH (Ruhrstahl-Heraeus) degassing plant will reduce the hydrogen and nitrogen gas content of the liquid steel to acceptable values as required for the production of high-quality plates. The twin-strand slab caster with a casting-bow radius of 9.5 meters will be capable of casting slabs with thicknesses of 250 and 300 mm and in widths ranging from 1400 to 2400 mm. It will be equipped with a wide array of technological packages including:
- DynaFlex for the online flexible adjustment of the mold-oscillation parameters
- SmartMold with its cassette-type mold design that allows the copper plates to be quickly exchanged
- LevCon 2 for improved automatic mold-level-control
- DynaWidth for dynamic mold-width adjustment
- SmartBender as the first segment in the strand-support system to enable fast slab-thickness changes to be carried out
- Advanced SmartSegment caster segments that will enable the online and fully automatic adjustment of slab thicknesses.
- DynaGap SoftReduction technology to allow the strand taper in the area of final solidification to be dynamically adjusted for improved internal strand quality.
The Level 2 Dynacs secondary-cooling system featuring dynamic strand-cooling management will ensure ideal cooling conditions according to the respective steel grade. With the employed 3D-Spray system the spray width is automatically adjusted according to the slab width, providing optimum slab cooling.
The first slab is scheduled to be cast on the new caster in May 2010, which will be rolled to plates in a new plate mill also under construction. This installation follows Siemens’ previous supply of a total of nine slab casters since the year 2000 comprising a total of 17 strands to Posco's Pohang and Gwangyang steel works.
With a crude-steel output exceeding 30 million tons in 2007, Posco is one of the ten largest steel producers in the world. At its production sites in Korea and elsewhere in Asia, the company produces a wide range of carbon, stainless and electrical-steel grades which are sold as coils, sheets, plates and wire rod that are used for a multitude of industrial applications.
The Siemens Industry Sector (Erlangen, Germany) is a leading supplier of production, transportation and building systems. The Sector comprises six Divisions: Building Technologies, Industry Automation, Industry Solutions, Mobility, Drive Technologies and Osram. In fiscal 2007 (ended September 30), Siemens Industry generated sales of approximately EUR40 billion (pro forma, unconsolidated) with around 209,000 employees worldwide.
With the business activities of Siemens VAI Metal Technologies (Linz, Austria), Siemens Water Technologies (Warrendale, Pa.), and Industry Technologies (Erlangen, Germany), the Siemens Industry Solutions Division (Erlangen, Germany) is one of the world's leading solution and service providers for industrial and infrastructure facilities. Using its own products, systems and process technologies, Industry Solutions develops and builds plants for end customers, commissions them and provides support during their entire life cycle.
VAI-Con, Dynacs, SmartSegment and DynaGap SoftReduction are registered trademarks of Siemens AG in certain countries.
