Jul 16 2008
Siemens VAI Metals Technologies received an order from the Ukrainian-based scrap trader Euro Finance Ltd. for the supply of a minimill at a new production facility in Byelaya Tserkov near Kiev. The project includes an electric arc furnace (EAF), a ladle furnace, a billet caster, a long-product rolling mill in addition to auxiliary facilities. The minimill will boast a production capacity of 1.8 million tons per year and is scheduled to go into operation in mid-2011. This investment will enable the company to expand its production and marketing activities for high-quality billets and long products.
Euro Finance Ltd. is the leading scrap supplier in the Ukraine. The company owns a network of scrap-collection and processing companies located in the Ukraine and Russia, and also owns companies in Switzerland and the U.K. Their main business activities focus on the purchase, preparation and sale of steel scrap to steel producers in the Ukraine as well as to foreign companies. Because of high scrap export taxes, Euro Finance Ltd. decided to build a new minimill in order to produce and sell billets and rolled products to take advantage of new business opportunities.
Siemens VAI Metals Technologies received contracts for the engineering and supply of process equipment for the new minimill, including a 120-ton-capacity Simetal Ultimate EAF with a tapping weight of 120 tons, a twin-station 120-ton ladle furnace, an eight-strand billet caster and a wire-rod and bar-rolling mill. The supply also includes an alloying system, dedusting system, cranes and other mobile equipment, laboratories in addition to the related electrical and automation systems. Advisory services for erection, start-up and commissioning will round off the scope of supply.
The Simetal Ultimate EAF will be a high-performance furnace capable of melting 1.8 million tons of scrap each year. Low- to medium-carbon, low-alloyed and alloyed steel grades will be produced. Single-bucket charging will be practiced which will shorten tap-to-tap times by several minutes. The furnace will also be equipped with refining combined burners (RCBs), oxy-gas burners and PC (postcombustion) lances to accelerate initial melting and enable postcombustion.
The twin-station ladle furnace with 120-ton-capacity vessels will serve for the fine adjustment of the steel composition as well as to adapt the final temperature of the steel as required for casting. The 18-bin alloying system will supply the EAF, the ladle during tapping as well as the ladle furnace.
The treatment capacity of the dedusting plant will approximately 1,720,000 Nm3 per hour and the clean-gas dust content will be less than ten mg/Nm³. Primary offgas from the EAF (270,000 Nm3/h) as well as secondary fumes generated during EAF melting, tapping, charging and deslagging will be exhausted and cleaned by the dedusting system. Furthermore, emissions from the ladle furnace, material-handling system and other auxiliary systems will be extracted and treated.
The eight-strand billet caster will be capable of casting 1.8 million tons of billets per year in 125- and 150-millimeter-square formats. Each strand will be equipped with Dynaflex oscillators for the flexible adjustment of the mold-oscillation parameters as well as with Diamold high-speed casting molds. Level 1 and Level 2 process optimization packages will also be supplied.
The continuous rolling-mill train with a nominal rolling capacity of 800,000 tons per year will be a combined wire-rod and bar-rolling mill. It will be comprised of ten monoblock stands for the rolling of wire-rod at speeds of 105 m/s to diameters of 5 to 16 millimeters, and 20 stands for bar rolling at speeds of 18 m/s. The rolled bars will be comprised of rounds with diameters of 10 to 40 millimeters, rebars with diameters from 8 to 40 millimeters and square bars with diameters between 10 and 40 millimeters.