HIGH-QUALITY

HOT STRIP PRODUCTION

from thin slabs at Essar Steel in India

Reprint from
Metallurgical Plant and Technology 3/2013,
pages 30-36

In 2010 and 2011, Essar Steel India extended its production capacity at the Hazira steel works by 5 million
t/year of crude steel and another 3.5 million t/year of
hot rolled strip. The pertaining plant technology consists of two 200 t Conarc furnaces, three twin-ladle
furnaces and a CSP plant. Whereas the latter started
operating with two strands, it has meanwhile been
extended to become the worlds first three-strand
CSP plant. This article describes the plant technology and presents the most important operating
results in the commissioning phase.

Figure 1. Layout of the three-strand CSP plant.

Autoren:
B. Fernandes, Essar Steel India Ltd., Hazira, India;
C. Klein, H. Rackel, SMS Siemag AG, Dsseldorf, Germany

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HIGH-QUALITY
HOT STRIP PRODUCTION
from thin slabs at Essar Steel in India
Essar Steel India is one of Indias largest producers of
flat steel products intended to be used, for example, in
the automotive, construction and shipbuilding industries. In 2007, the company placed an order with
SMS Siemag for the supply of a steelworks comprising two 200 t Conarc furnaces and three twin-ladle furnaces. With this new steelmaking plant, crude steel
capacity at the Hazira location has been increased to a
total of 10 million t/year.
The new Conarc furnaces are designed for a capacity
of 5 million t/year. The major part of the steel is
intended for the new thin-slab casting and rolling (CSP)
plant, figure 1, which is designed for the production of
3.5 million t/year of hot strip. A further part is processed
in the conventional continuous slab caster.

STEELMAKING PLANT
Whereas the two EAFs represent the heart of the meltshop, three adjacent twin-ladle furnaces are used for
refining. The Conarc EAF process is a combination of
the traditional routes of oxygen and electric arc furnace
steelmaking. The technology consists of a twin-shell
furnace, using a slewable set of electrodes as well as
at least one slewable top lance, which are alternately
used in both shells, figure 2.
This equipment provides for high flexibility in terms of
charge materials. The furnaces can process hot metal,
pig iron, DRI and scrap. The choice of input material can
be dynamically adapted to fluctuating market prices of
energy and raw materials.

Figure 2. The 200 t Conarc furnaces in operation.

SMS SIEMAG

Hot strip production

At the ladle furnaces, temperatures and alloy addition

can be precisely adjusted. Using a ladle furnace, offers
significant advantages for meltshop operation. These
include:
improved ladle logistics when feeding liquid steel
to the continuous casters,
improved steel quality and desulphurization capacity,
low emissions (particle, GHG, noise etc.),
low electrode consumption,
low consumption of alloying agents.
An off-gas treatment plant is used for dedusting and
cleaning the primary and secondary off-gases. The
whole steelmaking plant is controlled and monitored by
an X-Pact level 2 automation system with the pertaining metallurgical process models. Quality data and production data are visualized on the HMI, enabling simple
and intuitive interaction.

Figure 3. Casting floor at Essar Steel India.

THIN SLAB CASTING

AND ROLLING PLANT
The CSP thin slab casting and rolling plant produces
hot strips in widths from 950 to 1,680 mm and in thicknesses between 1.0 and 25.0 mm. Two CSP continuous thin slab casters were started up in 2011, providing
an annual capacity of 2.5 million t of hot strip. In the
future, this mill will be extended by a third continuous
casting machine to become the worlds first threestrand CSP plant with a total capacity of 3.5 million
t/year.
Essar Steel India is using the innovative CSP technology specifically for the production of high-quality steel
grades. Besides low, medium and high-carbon steels,
also tube steels, silicon steels and dual-phase steels
can be produced in high quality.

By subsequent casting and after passing the furnace

immediate rolling of the slabs, the CSP technology is
particularly energy-saving. The technical data of the
plant are summarized in table 1. The main equipment
of the mill comprises:
tunnel furnaces with swivel ferry,
seven finishing stands,
CVC plus with work-roll shifting and bending system,
hydraulic adjustment systems,
hydraulic and differential tension loopers,
two downcoilers,
complete X-Pact electrical and automation systems.
Figure 1 shows the layout of the three-strand plant.
Continuous casting machines. The CSP casters, figure 3, are vertical solid bending type machines
consisting of four segments each. The metallurgical
length is 8,065 mm. The process engineering allows a
stable and precisely controlled production sequence.
The mold monitoring system recognizes malfunctions

Commissioning
Production capacity
Slab thickness
Strip width
Strip thickness
Product range
Metallurgical length
Liquid core reduction

at an early stage and hence prevents break-outs. For

systematic cooling of the strand, the dynamic solidification control tool calculates the solidification parameters and specifies the necessary settings for the cooling water.
Liquid core reduction technology (LCR3) enables the
slab thickness to be infinitely set within a range from 55
to 80 mm. To reduce the strand thickness, the segments taper along the metallurgical length. LCR3 technology incorporates casting speed adjustment and provides the optimal input thickness for the rolling mill. The
mold level control system contributes to enhanced
product quality and maximized throughput.
Furnaces. Fuelled with natural gas or process gas,
the CSP furnaces ensure an entirely homogeneous
temperature distribution within the thin slab. During
work roll changing in the rolling mill, the tunnel furnace
buffers slabs for the casters to continue operating. The
rear parts of the furnaces can swivel like ferries, flexibly connecting the two outside strands with the centreline towards the rolling mill entrance.

March 2011
2.5 million t/year (option: 3.5 million t/year)
55 80 mm
850 1,680 mm
1.0 25.0 mm
Carbon steels (low, medium, high-carbon), Si steel, pipe grades, DP steels
8,065 mm (4 segments)
LCR3

Table 1. Technical data of the CSP plant at Essar Steel India.

SMS SIEMAG

Hot strip production

Figure 4. Control pulpit of the hot strip mill.

Hot rolling mill. The seven-stand hot rolling mill,

figure 4, processes the slabs into either thin strip down
to 1.0 mm and heavy-gauge strip up to 25.4 mm. Flying gauge change allows producing strips even below
1.0 mm.
Downstream of the tunnel furnace, a height-adjustable
high-pressure descaling system ensures a clean slab
surface before start of rolling. In stands F1 and F2 the
roll separating force is 45 MN, in stands F3 and F4 42
MN and in stands F5 to F7 32 MN. All stands are
equipped with hydraulic adjustment systems, work roll
bending and CVC plus technology. Hydraulic loopers
(F1 F4) and differential tension loopers (F5 F6)
between the stands ensure stable strip travel also for
thin final gauges. Besides the main and auxiliary drives,
the electrical and automation X-Pact system was supplied by SMS Siemag.
The strip cooling system uses selective cooling patterns. Edge masking is implemented to prevent excessive cooling of the strip edges, improving cold strip flatness. The optimum cooling strategy for each product is
preset by the X-Pact cooling model. It provides cooling

curves for the laminar cooling system to be set as a

function of the material properties to be attained.
Two fully hydraulic downcoilers have been optimized
for straight-sided, closely wound coils for any steel
grades and strip dimensions. The patented automatic
step control system prevents marks on the inner wraps
and protects the coilers mechanical equipment.
Safe and gentle transport to the coil yard is performed
by a pallet system for horizontal coil transport, figure 5.
As the individual pallets are separately controlled, coil
transport operations are decoupled from the hot rolling
process in the mill.
Automation system. To assure high quality, the strip
surface condition is monitored by an inspection line.
Downstream of the rolling mill, the geometrical characteristics such as thickness, width, thickness profile,
flatness and strip temperature are measured and transmitted to the X-Pact automation system. Like in the
steel plant of Essar Steel India, also in the CSP plant
all information from the production process is central
ized in the control pulpits.

The automation system of the CSP plant was tested

before delivery, using the tried-and-tested plug & work
method. In SMS Siemags test fields, the automation
system was tested under quasi-realistic conditions and
optimized well before installation at the customers
works. A simulation tool reproduces the entire mechanical equipment, the drive technology and the
processes. In addition, the SMS Siemag employees
trained the operating personnel of Essar Steel India on
the authentic control desks. The personnel of Essar
Steel India learned how to operate the plant in real
operating situations (so-called virtual productive operation). The plug & work method considerably reduces
commissioning time, accelerating the run-up phase and
thus the return-on-investment (ROI).

OPERATIONAL RESULTS
The commissioning milestones were as follows:
rolling of the first strip: 31 March 2011
start of hot commissioning: 8 April 2011
start of operation with two casting strands: 12 July
2011
first strip with a thickness of 1 mm: 20 June 2011
first strip with a thickness of 20 mm: 30 August
2011
FAC: 31 October 2011 (first stage with two casting
strands accepted).
Just three months after the start of hot commissioning, rolling with two casting strands was carried out.
After seven months, the first section of the two-strand
caster was accepted by the customer Essar Steel India.
For documentation of the commissioning results, the
following parameters have been considered:
average casting time per ladle and availability of
the caster,
production start-up curve,
cobble rate,
product mix,
performance values attained for thickness, flatness, final rolling and coiling temperatures,
rolling of thin and ultra-thin hot strip.

Figure 5. Coil transfer by individually controlled pallets.

SMS SIEMAG

Hot strip production

Figure 6. Final thickness range of the hot strip during start-up.

During the first 16 months after start of commissioning,

the following values were attained for the caster:
on average, seven heats per casting sequence,
max. 18 heats,
80 % availability of the caster (steel in mould),
98.6 % yield (ratio between thin slab weight and
weight charged to the caster),
average casting time per ladle: 70 min,
average casting speed: 5 m/min,
average throughput: 2.94 t/min,
average casting thickness: 60 mm.
After start of operation with two casting strands in July
2011, monthly hot strip production exceeded the
150,000 t level for the first time in January 2012. However, as production had to be adapted to the market
demand, the production capacity was only partially utilized.

Figure 7. Thickness performance.

After only 250 days following the start of commissioning, the designed daily productivity was for the first
time exceeded, subsequently amounting to 130 %.
(100 % daily capacity corresponds to the nominal
capacity of the plant of 2.5 million t/year with two casting strands.) The Essar CSP plant achieved a cobble
rate of 0.05 % of the total quantity of all coils produced.
Figure 6 shows the development of the minimum (left)
and maximum (middle) final thickness of coils produced
from April 2011 to July 2012. The figure also shows the
quantities of coils in the respective thickness classes.
The lowest final thickness of 1 mm was rolled 57 days
after the start of hot commissioning. The thickness of
20 mm was rolled 120 days after the start of hot commissioning. Approx. 20% of the production was rolled
down to final rolling thicknesses of less than 2 mm.
0.32% of the production ranges between 15 mm and

Figure 8. Flatness performance.

20 mm final thickness. During the above mentioned

period, more than 90,000 coils were produced, including low-carbon, medium-carbon and high-carbon steels
as well as peritectic grades.

The results for flatness are summarized in figure 8,

independently of the final rolling thickness and the final
rolling width. In approximately 98% of the cases, deviation from flatness is within 15 I-units.

Quality data. Final rolling thickness within the given

tolerance is of utmost importance, and production
results for produced coils are shown in figure 7.
Approx. 95% of all measured values are within a thickness deviation of 10 m. However, there is no differentiation as to the final thickness classes.

Since the final rolling and coiling temperatures are decisive parameters for the internal strip quality, these temperatures are within a very narrow range. As shown in
figure 9, more than 96% of all measured values are
within a tolerance range of 15 K.

Figure 9. Final rolling temperature (left) and coiling temperature (right).

SMS SIEMAG

Hot strip production

Figure 10. Thin strip rolling campaign.

Thin and ultra-thin gauges. The results of several successive thin-strip rolling campaigns are presented in figure 10. The aim was to roll thin strips of
thicknesses of 1.5 mm down to 1 mm. The final rolling
width was 1,000 mm. Coils ranging from 2 to 3 mm at
the beginning of the sequence are typical of the structure of the rolling campaigns. Only five to seven strips
at the beginning of the campaign are needed to achieve
a final rolling thickness of 1.5 mm. In these particular
campaigns, the final rolling thickness of 1 mm is maintained for around 30 strips before a roll change is performed and the next sequence starts. Using flying
gauge change, Essar Steel India has also already produced ultra-thin hot strip of 0.8 mm thickness.

10

SUMMARY
Thanks to the perfect interaction between the proven
process models and the control circuits tailored to the
mechanical equipment and to the optimum preparation
in the plug & work test, production results to the customers full satisfaction were achieved after an
extremely short time. The successful commissioning
of the steelworks and the CSP plant at Essar Steel
India once again demonstrated the advantage of having
the mechanical equipment and the electrical and
automation systems supplied from a single source.

SMS SIEMAG AG

SMS SIEMAG AG

Hot Rolling Mills Division

Continuous Casters Division

Wiesenstrasse 30
57271 Hilchenbach Germany

Eduard-Schloemann-Strasse 4
40237 Dsseldorf Germany

Phone: +49 2733 29-1616

Fax:
+49 2733 29-2832

Phone: +49 211 881- 6134

Fax:
+49 211 881- 4841

E-mail: [email protected]
Internet: www.sms-siemag.com

E-mail: [email protected]
Internet: www.sms-siemag.com

S1+W4/216E
750/07/13 . ky . Printed in Germany

MEETING your EXPECTATIONS

The information provided in this brochure contains a general description of the performance characteristics of the products concerned. The actual products may not always have these
characteristics as described and, in particular, these may change as a result of further developments of the products. The provision of this information is not intended to have and will
not have legal effect. An obligation to deliver products having particular characteristics shall only exist if expressly agreed in the terms of the contract.