First European Plant of Its Kind in Japan: Siemens Commissions Continuous Slab Caster at Tokyo Steel

First European Plant of Its Kind in Japan: Siemens Commissions Continuous Slab Caster at Tokyo Steel

In mid-January 2007, the single-strand continuous caster supplied by Siemens Metals Technologies for Tokyo Steel at its Kyushu Works was successfully commissioned. This is the first European-designed plant of its type that was installed in a Japanese steelmaking plant. The new caster has an annual capacity of 1.2 million tons and is part of a new production line for high-quality flat products.

Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co. Ltd. is Japan’s largest electric arc furnace steelmaker and has three production facilities in Japan. In order to serve the growing demand for heavy plates, Tokyo Steel decided in 2004 to install a heavy-plate mill at its Kyushu works. In the scope of this project, Siemens Metals Technologies received an order for the supply of a new single-strand continuous slab caster in 2005. An electric arc furnace with a tapping weight of 130 tons supplies the caster with liquid steel. Medium-thick slabs with a thickness of 150 mm and a width of 1,500–2,500 mm can be cast at a speed of up to 1.8 meters per minute. The slabs are subsequently processed in the heavy-plate mill.

Siemens Metals Technologies was responsible for the engineering and supply of the entire slab-casting plant. In addition to the mechanical equipment, this also includes the hydraulic, cooling, lubrication, electrical, automation and instrumentation systems.

The slab caster features a number of technological packages to ensure continuous production and fulfillment of the product quality demands. This includes LevCon for automatic mold-level control, DynaWidth for online mold-width adjustment, the MoldExpert system for automatic breakout prediction and strand-shell friction monitoring, as well as the DynaFlex mold oscillator for flexible adjustment of the oscillation parameters. The caster bow area and the straightening zone are equipped with low-maintenance Smart-Segments which enable dynamic roller-gap adjustments. A long service life is ensured by intermediately supported strand-guide rollers. The caster is also equipped with the Dynacs secondary-cooling system and with the VAI-Q slab-quality-control system for quality assurance. Additionally, Siemens Metals Technologies supplied the automation and process control systems for the slab caster, allowing all operational parameters to be optimally harmonized with one another throughout the entire production process.

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