Baosteel to install new Continuous Caster

The new 2-strand continuous caster with optimized roll geometry will be supplied by Primetals. The continuous caster No. 6 will produce both conventional and silicon steel grades for various industries including home appliances and automotive.

The world’s largest steel producer, Baosteel, a part of Baowu Group, already operates more than 20 casters supplied by Primetals Technologies. The new continuous caster No. 6 will feature several innovative technologies. Experts from Primetals Technologies will establish the ideal caster roll geometry already at the design stage. This is thanks to a model recently developed by Primetals, which reduces mold level fluctuations stemming from unsteady bulging by 50 percent, leading to both higher casting speeds and greater productivity.
A comprehensive suite of automation and technology solutions ensures that Baosteel’s new caster will produce slabs with top-level inner quality – an important feature for the manufacture of demanding silicon grades. The Smart Mold, a high-performance cassette-type mold, will be configured with the DynaWidth online mold-width-adjustment system for flexible and fast slab-width changes. Together, these systems make sure that high-quality conditions are met early in the casting process. An electromagnetic stirrer is a key part of the mechatronics package and allows for enhanced inner-strand quality.
New dynamic secondary cooling and soft-reduction packages drastically contribute to quality improvements by calculating thermodynamic effects such as conductivity, density, and strand temperature, says Primetals. Several expert systems round off the extensive scope of automation and technology solutions. The computer-aided quality control system Quality Expert tracks, controls, and supervises quality-related data. This technology also makes quality prediction for the cast products, contributing to continuous improvement of product quality. The Nozzle Expert checks the condition of the secondary cooling system online and detects clogged nozzles and leakages with high accuracy.
Source: Primetals Technologies