Mechel, a Russian metal and mining company has installed the blooming concaster #5 with 1 Mt annual capacity at the oxygen converter shop of the Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant to ensure supply of continuously cast, superior quality billets.
The concaster has the capability of casting 200 x 200 mm and 300 x 360 mm billets from a range of steels, including structural, carbon and alloyed steels establishing the Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant as a leading producer of specialty alloys and steels in Russia.
The concaster #5 is a section of an area called a complex that casts rail billets and steel. The area also has a dual-position ladle furnace #4 having a yearly capacity of 1.2 Mt and a dual-chamber vacuum degasser having 650,000 t annual capacity, which are essential to obtain metals having the desired specifications. The out-of-furnace steel processing equipment will be deployed by the year-ending 2011. The building plans of this area include environmental protection strategies. The facilities in the area include dust-gas filtering systems and a modern circuit water-supply cycle.
The funds required for this area, which includes the ladle furnace# 4, the blooming concaster #5, and the vacuum degasser, is around $189 million. The company Danieli, based in Italy supplied the equipment.
The CEO of Mechel Steel Management Company stated that deploying the concaster’s facilities prior to the launch of the universal mill provides time not just to hone the technique of producing rail billets and metal but also to obtain rails from steel.