THE NEW STATE-OF-THE-ART OF STAINLESS SLAB PRODUCTION -- THE NEW SLAB CASTERS FOR AVESTAPOLARIT TORNIO, FINLAND AND ALZ, BELGIUM

摘要

In November 2000, the Belgian stainless-steel producer ALZ awarded VAI with a contract to upgrade their steelmaking plant and increase production. The scope of work included the installation of the world's most productive and largest stainless-steel slab caster designed for an annual output of 1.2 million tons. As a major challenge, the existing casting machine had to be replaced within a comprehensive shut-down period of 21 days only to minimize the financial burden due to the production outage. Therefore special efforts and innovative solutions were necessary to accomplish the complete revamp including cold testing within this tight schedule. Innovative project management solutions combined with excellent team efforts resulted in a successful start-up on October 1, 2002, after a record shutdown period of 20 days only. AvestaPolarit Tornio (APTO) has chosen a different strategy to increase their slab production capacity from 600.000 to 1.65 million tons per year. Instead of revamping the old steelmaking facilities and casting machine APTO awarded an order for building a new high performance stainless steel caster to VOEST ALPINE Industrieanlagenbau (VAI) in 2000. In order to meet APTO's stringent quality demands, the continuous casting machine is equipped with today's most advanced technological caster features. In addition highest productivity is realized with casting speeds up to 1.6 m/min for a casting thickness of 185 mm. Features, details and results of both projects will be discussed together with technologies employed.