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ThyssenKrupp Reaches Production Milestone at Duisburg-Beeckerwerth Meltshop
09/28/2010 - The Beeckerwerth BOF meltshop of ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe in Duisburg recently produced its 200 millionth tonne of crude steel. The meltshop has a capacity of 5.9 million tonnes of steel per year with an average heat weight of 265 tonnes.
The Beeckerwerth BOF meltshop of ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe in Duisburg recently produced its 200 millionth tonne of crude steel.
The Duisburg-Beeckerwerth meltshop, which employs 734 people, has a capacity of 5.9 million tonnes of steel per year with an average heat weight of 265 tonnes. The facility was built 48 years ago as an LD meltshop with two converters; a third converter was added in 1971. Some ingot casting capacity was closed in 1974 when the first continuous caster was built. A second continuous caster was put into operation in 1980; ingot casting was discontinued completely in 1986.
In 1987, the meltshop was modernized with a converter gas recovery system and new primary and secondary dust collection systems. At the same time, a first steel degassing system was put into operation. A second one began operation in late 2001.
In the Beeckerwerth meltshop, hot metal previously tapped from the Hamborn and Schwelgern blast furnaces and delivered in torpedo ladles is processed in several stages to produce liquid steel of the required quality. While sulfur is removed in an upstream process, other impurities such as silicon and phosphorus are removed in the converter by top-blowing oxygen through a water-cooled lance in a process known as refining. To cool the boiling steel, steel scrap is added in quantities of 10 to 30% of the overall heat weight. When the refined steel is tapped into a pouring ladle, it still has a temperature of 1650 to 1720°C.
Alloying agents can also be added during tapping. The steel has to undergo post-treatment, and then is cast into 255-mm thick and up to 2400-mm wide slabs on one bow-type and one vertical bending-type continuous caster.
The Beeckerwerth BOF steelmaking shop produces top-quality starting material for high-strength steel, ULC and IF steels as well as tinplate, sheet, skelp and quarto plate.
