Oct 16 2008
A two-strand rod mill originally designed to produce low carbon and medium carbon steel for Wuhan Iron & Steel has successfully been upgraded by Siemens VAI. The mill designed to produce 700,000 tons of steel per year before achieves now a record production of 850,000 tons of steel per year and now produces quality carbon at higher speeds with greater mill utilization.
Wuhan Iron & Steel, China’s oldest steel maker, built a two-strand rod mill in 1996, but when market demand shifted to higher quality products and heavier coils, it began an upgrade process. “Together with the increase of production also the product mix has moved from 85 percent low carbon and medium carbon steel, producing 1.8 ton coils, to 70 percent quality carbon steel grades,” reported Michael Xuan of Morgan Construction, the U.S. based specialist of Siemens VAI for high speed wire rod mills. The figures have been confirmed by Cheng Xianzhou, Director and Zhu Shuangxue, Director, Quality Control Department of Heavy Section Mill Plant, Wuhan Iron & Steel, at the Morgan Symposium, held in Worcester, Mass., USA.
Wuhan today is the largest tire cord producer in China, with 250,000 tons per year dedicated to 5.5mm coil. The upgrade was completed in just 58 days. The highlight of the modification product was the addition of Morgan’s Reducing Sizing Mill to each strand for single family rolling throughout the mill, easier set up, lower inventory of spare rolls and guides, better finished product tolerance and more uniform finished product properties.
Other benefits of the modifications are increased mill utilization of about 10 percent, adjusted roll pass design with simpler set up with single family rolling, reduced guide changing time, closer temperature controls for low temperature rolling for specialty steel grades, larger billet size, reduced cobble rate, reduced water use, and greater information exchange throughout the plant.