The quote “Nothing great is easy” has been used for many decades, and the ability to produce high-quality rolled products consistently and rapidly is no exception. Primetals Technologies offers a whole range of solutions to meet the challenges facing producers.
In striving to produce world-class material, Primetals Technologies has worked all over the world with steel and aluminum producers to create new products at higher and higher quality levels without reducing mill throughput or reliability. A number of process optimization examples for aluminum rolling mills and steel plate mills are described in the following:
Significant Improvements with Small Changes
Primetals Technologies was recently contracted to visit an existing aluminum foil mill in order to improve hydraulic automation gauge control (HAGC) and roll profile systems that have been operating for several years, but not at their highest potential. The changes included not only tuning the system parameters such as system gains, but also rethinking various control logic settings. One outcome of this review led to moving the software filter from measurement feedback to the controller output. This relatively innocuous change created significantly faster response times and improved flatness.
Optimized Schedule Increases Quantity and Quality
One European aluminum producer improved both quantity and quality by optimizing a specific low-load rolling schedule. Engineers at Primetals Technologies studied the mill design and conducted a series of calculations using in-house models to determine what was possible. The calculations concluded that a downward revision of the low-load limit was technically feasible.
The desired change to the minimum load limit was successfully made, and the control loops retuned. At very low speeds, the heat generated by material deformation is low, making it difficult to achieve the ideal temperature difference between the work rolls and the coolant to ensure high-quality flatness performance. The increased rolling speeds resulted in greater heat generation rates in the mill bite. This, in turn, led to more stable flatness performance. Results from the initial trials on rolling speed are impressive, with a near doubling to 700 meters per minute (mpm).
Comprehensive Process Know-How for Optimized Throughput and Lower Costs
In cooperation with a major European steel producer, Primetals Technologies established a reliable route for producing normalized steel plates. The benefits included reduced processing costs for these plates and, consequently, a lower load on the existing heat-treatment line, allowing throughput to be optimized in this area.
The aim of the work was to develop and expand the normalized rolling production range for structural steel grade S355J2+N. Primetals Technologies provided process know-how for the entire process and production route across material chemistry, reheating furnace practice, rolling schedules, cooling bed, and hot stacking. Results for samples taken from both the end and body sections of a selection of the trial products manufactured with two slab compositions were compared to EN Standard 10025-2. The requirements for this thickness are 0.2% offset yield strength of 345 MPa, and an impact toughness of 27 J at -20°C for the normalized rolled delivery condition.
All products passed the EN Standard 10025-2 requirements for yield strength and exhibited only a small spread in the data set (Figure 1). As a result of these trials, up to 72% of the customer’s product mix for normalized plates could be produced by normalized rolling, thus dramatically increasing the capacity for normalized products. In addition, the costs of offline heat treatment could be reduced; the environmental impact of the process was lower because fuel did not have to be burned for the heat treatment; and alloying costs were reduced through the use of specific material chemistries prescribed by Primetals Technologies.
Fig. 1: Sample data from initial trials
Excellent Cooperation, Excellent Results
Primetals Technologies was asked to work with a well-established plate manufacturer to help produce very wide (>4 m) plates at 6 mm and 7 mm thicknesses with low levels of cold leveling. The customer was very familiar with the plate rolling process and had successfully rolled many difficult grades for the international market, but only at higher thicknesses and lower aspect ratios. Site visits, along with preliminary trials, identified what could be achieved, which practices were used as standard, and what, if any, mechanical changes would be required. A full mill survey was then conducted by Primetals Technologies using the latest laser survey equipment, and the necessary changes were implemented by the customer.
To achieve consistency, the rolling schedules for all grades and sizes were studied in depth, which resulted in the model controlling the mill being tuned to ensure that the predicted load and torque accuracy was within +/-10% of the actual values. As a result of the excellent cooperation between the plate producer and Primetals Technologies, the final trial resulted in direct shipping values of 90% compared to the original value of less than 30%. The main photo for this article shows the high degree of final product flatness on the cooling bed.
