Project overview

Process optimisation

Per­Mon­LiSt - Con­tinu­ous per­form­ance mon­it­or­ing and cal­ib­ra­tion of model and con­trol func­tions for li­quid steel­mak­ing pro­cesses

Ana­lyt­ic­al pro­cess mod­els are used as part of Level-2 auto­ma­tion for ob­ser­va­tion and con­trol of steel­mak­ing pro­cesses. Due to changes in the op­er­a­tion prac­tices, the input ma­ter­i­als or the pro­duced qual­it­ies, the pre­dic­tion ac­cur­acy of the mod­els and the re­li­ab­il­ity of set-point cal­cu­la­tions is de­teri­or­ated. For con­tinu­ous mon­it­or­ing of pro­cess per­form­ance, as well as model ac­cur­acy and ad­apt­a­tion of model and ma­ter­i­al para­met­ers, ap­pro­pri­ate ana­lys­is tools are miss­ing. Thus, the re­li­ab­il­ity of pro­cess mod­els with­in a Level-2 auto­ma­tion sys­tem is not per­man­ently en­sured.

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Hy­droP­ic - Ana­lys­is and con­trol of hy­dro­gen con­tent dur­ing steel­mak­ing

Hy­dro­gen dis­solved in steel can be in­ter­sti­tially em­bed­ded in the mi­cro­struc­ture, which leads to tensile and fa­tigue strength re­duc­tion and there­fore to com­pon­ent mal­func­tions. The de­mands on low­est hy­dro­gen con­tents in the final steel product are more and more in­creas­ing, es­pe­cially for high strength steels. A tar­geted con­trol of hy­dro­gen con­tent in li­quid steel­mak­ing is dif­fi­cult, as the level of hy­dro­gen pick-up after va­cu­um treat­ment can be pre­dicted only with high un­cer­tainty, and only spot H meas­ure­ments are avail­able.

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Tri­boSim - Ex­per­i­ment­al and sim­u­lat­ive eval­u­ation of wear on roll coat­ings

Be­cause of in­creased wear on work rolls due to in­creased use of ultra-high-strength steels in auto­mot­ive pro­duc­tion and the use of toxic and car­ci­no­gen­ic chromic acid for wear-re­du­cing hard chrome plat­ing of rolls, costly plant tri­als are re­quired for the de­vel­op­ment of new roll coat­ings

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DES­TINY - De­vel­op­ment of an Ef­fi­cient mi­crowave Sys­tem for ma­ter­i­al Trans­form­a­tion in en­ergy IN­tens­ive pro­cesses for an im­proved Yield

Steel pro­duc­tion is an en­ergy-in­tens­ive pro­cess due to the chem­ic­al en­ergy re­quired to re­duce the iron ore with the help of re­du­cing agents. But most ores and re­cyc­ling ma­ter­i­als have to be pro­cessed using a lot of en­ergy from fossil sources, as they gen­er­ally do not have the right com­pos­i­tion and grain size.

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Rol­loil­free II - Trans­fer of aqueous oil free lub­ric­ants into steel cold rolling prac­tice

Based on the pre­ced­ing pro­ject Rol­lOil­Free, oil-free lub­ric­ants (OFL) were de­veloped as sub­sti­tute to the con­ven­tion­al oil-based lub­ric­ants in steel cold rolling. Pilot tests showed that it is pos­sible to roll with com­par­able rolling forces and strip tem­per­at­ures and to achieve the final strip thick­ness.

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TailoredZA - Tailored struc­ture of multi-layer zinc alloy coat­ings to im­prove form­ing and cor­ro­sion pro­tec­tion prop­er­ties

Gal­van­ised and pas­siv­ated steel pipes are highly bent for many ap­plic­a­tions and are also cold-formed at the joints. At high de­grees of de­form­a­tion, the pas­siv­a­tion lay­ers can par­tially crack and the zinc lay­ers can be dam­aged. Cor­ro­sion there­fore oc­curs more fre­quently in the heav­ily de­formed areas of the com­pon­ents and re­duces their ser­vice life.

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METACAST - Map­ping, Edu­cat­ing, Train­ing, Ap­ply­ing mod­els in con­tinu­ous CAST­ing

Mod­el­ling is a stra­tegic tool for the suc­cess of all activ­it­ies tack­ling the chal­lenges of the steel in­dustry. At the mo­ment there is a lack of a com­mon lan­guage and “big pic­ture” re­gard­ing the use of nu­mer­ic­al mod­el­ling to ad­dress prob­lems by en­gin­eers or re­search­ers ded­ic­ated to mod­el­ling.

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Sun­Shine – Sus­tain­able new cast­ing and rolling pro­cess mon­it­or­ing / sen­sor­ing ap­proach aimed at prop­er sur­face qual­ity and shape in flat and long products

Non-uni­form in-mould so­lid­i­fic­a­tion in long term and flat products can lead to shape and sur­face de­fects af­fect­ing as-cast qual­ity and con­tinu­ous pro­duc­tion flow. De­creas­ing the num­ber on products which have to be scrapped due to de­fects would re­duce the CO2 emis­sions sig­ni­fic­antly.

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Max­H2DR - En­rich­ment of Hy­dro­gen in the dir­ect re­duc­tion pro­cess

Hy­dro­gen-powered dir­ect re­duc­tion (DR) is the key tech­no­logy for de­car­bon­iz­ing in­teg­rated steel plants. Nat­ur­al gas-fired DR is well es­tab­lished in the in­dustry, es­pe­cially out­side Europe. There is no ex­per­i­ence with high H2 en­rich­ment above 80%.

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RE­VaMP – Ret­ro­fit­ting of sensors and op­tim­iz­a­tion tools for the ef­fi­cient use of vari­able input ma­ter­i­als in the metal-pro­du­cing in­dustry

In metal mak­ing pro­cesses, metal­lic scraps from end of life goods are re­cycled and used as sec­ond­ary raw ma­ter­i­als, which is both eco­lo­gic­ally and com­mer­cially be­ne­fi­cial. But the in­creas­ing amounts of scrap in the feed­stock bears chal­lenges, since their com­pos­i­tion and melt­down en­ergy and thus the value in use can vary sig­ni­fic­antly.

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Di­GreeS - Demon­stra­tion of Di­git­al twins for a Green Steel value chain

In the con­text of the trans­ition to low-car­bon, green and sus­tain­able steel pro­duc­tion in Europe, dis­rupt­ive tech­no­lo­gies are needed to re­duce the en­vir­on­ment­al foot­print as close to zero as pos­sible, along with seam­less di­git­al­isa­tion of pro­duc­tion pro­cesses, and skilled people to co-design and un­der­stand the trans­form­a­tion pro­cess.

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Nano­carbides II – In­flu­ence of deep cryo­gen­ic treat­ment on dis­tor­tion, cor­ro­sion and frac­ture tough­ness

In a pre­vi­ous pro­ject, high-alloy steels from the hot work, cold work and plastic mould­ing sec­tors were sub­jec­ted to an ad­ap­ted heat treat­ment, in­teg­rat­ing a cryo­gen­ic treat­ment into the steps of aus­ten­it­ising, quench­ing and tem­per­ing in such a way that a com­par­able hard­ness was achieved dur­ing harden­ing and tem­per­ing or harden­ing, cryo­gen­ic cool­ing and tem­per­ing.

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Min­SiDeg - Min­im­isa­tion of sinter de­grad­a­tion between sinter plant and blast fur­nace ex­ploit­ing em­bed­ded real-time ana­lyt­ics

The Major ob­ject­ive of the pro­ject Min­SiDeg from the eco­nom­ic and eco­lo­gic point of view is to de­crease sig­ni­fic­antly costs and en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact at sinter plants and blast fur­naces. From the tech­nic­al point of view, major ob­ject­ive is to op­tim­ise the sinter qual­ity along the pro­duc­tion chain im­prov­ing both, sinter plant and blast fur­nace op­er­a­tion.

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Re­al­TimeCast­Sup­port- Em­bed­ded real-time ana­lys­is of con­tinu­ous cast­ing for ma­chine-sup­por­ted qual­ity op­tim­isa­tion

Thermal and fluid-mech­an­ic­al con­di­tions in con­tinu­ous cast­ing moulds are only roughly known al­though highly rel­ev­ant. Manu­al pro­cess con­trol is dif­fi­cult due to the great num­ber of in­flu­en­cing factors.

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Rol­loil­free – Steel cold rolling with aqueous oil­free lub­ric­ants

Oil-based lub­ric­ants are state-of-the-art in cold rolling of steel and hot rolling of alu­mini­um. 2-phase char­ac­ter of emul­sions and as­so­ci­ated prop­erty pro­file re­quires con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing to avoid pro­cess in­stabil­it­ies. In­creased ef­fort and ex­pendit­ure for care, con­trol and losses com­pens­a­tion of lub­ric­ants.

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Re­duwear­guid – Re­duc­tion of wear on guid­ing com­pon­ents in hot rolling fin­ish­ing and coil­ing line for im­proved ser­vice life time and product sur­face qual­ity

The main re­quire­ments of wear com­pon­ents in hot strip mills are high res­ist­ance against: ab­ras­ive wear to in­crease life­time, thermal im­pact to de­crease wear, cor­ro­sion and ad­he­sion to de­crease wear. Only a few stud­ies have been per­formed to in­vest­ig­ate deeply the guid­ing com­pon­ents in hot strip mills.

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Re­duHeatLoss – Re­duc­tion of Heat Losses dur­ing Hot Rolling of Long Products

The aim of Re­duHeatLoss is to min­im­ise heat losses of hot rolled long products along the rolling pro­cess. Many stud­ies have been fo­cussed on heat losses dur­ing re­heat­ing. Other heat losses have been neg­lected, al­though, es­pe­cially in long product rolling, they con­trib­ute for more than 50% to the over­all heat losses. Re­duHeatLoss mainly fo­cuses on heat sinks (heat losses) re­lated to de­scal­ing and work roll cool­ing, for which pro­pos­ing in­nov­at­ive solu­tions can be im­ple­men­ted with lim­ited ef­forts in terms of design / pro­cess en­gin­eer­ing.

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In­tellCut­Pro­cess – Op­tim­isa­tion of cut­ting pro­cesses using in­tel­li­gent cut­ting tools

The com­pany Adi­ent pro­duces seat rails (by form­ing and punch­ing of steel sheet) with an an­nu­al pro­duc­tion of ap­prox. 60 mil­lion pieces. In ap­prox. 70 % of the cases the punch loses its di­men­sion­al ac­cur­acy due to sur­face wear (cut­ting edges be­comes blunt and par­tial flak­ing can ap­pear) à there is a great need to im­prove the pro­cess and tools.

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iSLAG – Op­tim­ising slag re­cyc­ling through on-line char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion devices and in­tel­li­gent de­cision sup­port sys­tems

This pro­ject aims at im­prov­ing slag val­or­iz­a­tion from elec­tric steel­mak­ing pro­cess route through im­proved slag con­di­tion­ing and ex­plor­a­tion of new re­cyc­ling paths, to fa­cil­it­ate the im­ple­ment­a­tion of a real “in­dus­tri­al sym­bi­os­is”.

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PRO­TEUS-RS – Long Product Qual­ity Op­tim­isa­tion through En­hance­ment and Util­isa­tion of Re­sid­ual Stress min­im­ising Pro­cess Strategies

Dur­ing rolling, straight­en­ing and thermal pro­cessing of long products in­tern­al stresses arise im­pair­ing the products ma­ter­i­al prop­er­ties and caus­ing ma­ter­i­al dis­tor­tion due to stress re­lief mech­an­isms. The char­ac­ter­ist­ics of those ef­fects are still as­so­ci­ated with a high de­gree of un­cer­tainty.

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Op­t­ProKomp

In al­most all in­dus­tri­al areas, eco­nom­ic ob­ject­ives such as in­creas­ing pro­ductiv­ity while sim­ul­tan­eously in­creas­ing en­ergy and re­source ef­fi­ciency, com­bined with light­weight con­struc­tion or com­pon­ent mini­atur­iz­a­tion, lead to con­stantly in­creas­ing per­form­ance dens­it­ies and thus to ever high­er stat­ic and dy­nam­ic com­pon­ent loads.

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non stick-FiReNi – De­vel­op­ment of stress com­pat­ible coat­ing sys­tems for the op­tim­iz­a­tion of cut­ting tools

Grow­ing de­mands on cut­ting tools re­gard­ing cut­ting qual­ity when pro­cessing high-qual­ity strip ma­ter­i­als, e.g. spe­cial paper, FRPs, in­su­lat­ing ma­ter­i­als. Prob­lems es­pe­cially due to buildup, high fric­tion and dust gen­er­a­tion. Per­form­ance of the cut­ting pro­cess is de­term­ined by the shape, sur­face and ma­ter­i­al of the cut­ting edge and the knife body as well as the pro­cess para­met­ers.

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FlexGap – In­dus­tri­al demon­stra­tion of novel ad­apt­ive flat bear­ing

With more and more need for high-strength-steel the rolling-mills have to be ex­pan­ded to deal with the res­ult­ing high­er rolling-forces. An ef­fect of this is the great­er con­stric­tion of the rolling-stand. There­fore the flat-bear­ings, guid­ing the chocks, have to be de­signed thin­ner to avoid clamp­ing. On the other hand, while rolling lower-strength-steel, these thin­ner flat-bear­ings cause worse guid­ance of the rolls, high­er wear and great­er os­cil­la­tion tend­ency that al­lows self-ex­cited vi­bra­tions to build up a high mag­nitude.

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Elec­tro­less nick­el dis­per­sion coat­ing for wear pro­tec­tion

Tool wear oc­curs dur­ing cut­ting and form­ing tem­per­at­ure gradi­ents and de­vi­ations, mech­an­ic­al stresses and ab­ra­sion and sur­face fa­tigue. The solu­tion is the de­vel­op­ment of wear pro­tec­tion sys­tems based on chem­ic­al nick­el dis­per­sion coat­ings.

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In­fire – Strategy to in­crease the hot strip rolling per­form­ance in terms of sur­face qual­ity, final prop­er­ties and re­pro­du­cib­il­ity

Achiev­ing high sur­face qual­ity of hot rolled high strength steel strip and re­pro­du­cible rolling res­ults re­mains chal­len­ging: Primary scale residues and scale formed dur­ing rolling lead to sur­face impair­ments. In­flu­ences and in­ter­re­la­tions of pro­cess con­di­tions on product qual­ity are poorly known. As steel grades with high­er strength are de­man­ded, hot rolling con­di­tions change.

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Temp­Kor­roSchu

Dur­ing re-heat­ing of ma­ter­i­al for the pro­duc­tion of spe­cial long products and forged screws 1 to 2 % of oxide scale is formed. Scale causes de­fects at the sur­faces. Scale causes dam­ages of the form­ing tools (rolls, dies).

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Op­tim­al Re­sid­ual Stress Con­trol – ORSC

Trend in product de­vel­op­ment where high­er qual­ity stand­ards with tight­er ma­ter­i­al prop­erty tol­er­ances are de­man­ded by cli­ents. Qual­ity prob­lems coupled to re­sid­ual stresses. Tra­di­tion­al con­trol ap­proaches are work­ing in­suf­fi­ciently.

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Cool­Cut – De­vel­op­ment of an in­nov­at­ive in­dus­tri­al cut­ting tech­nique for highly ab­ras­ive web-type ma­ter­i­al

High tri­bolo­gic­al load on cir­cu­lar knives, res­ult­ing in high wear. Wear of knives caused by dif­fer­ent mech­an­isms, de­pend­ing on cut­ting ma­ter­i­al, di­men­sions, cut­ting para­met­ers and tool ma­ter­i­al. Re­duc­tion of cut­ting qual­ity (due to wear). High fre­quent knife change / reg­rind­ing ne­ces­sary. Com­plic­ated re­ad­just­ment of the knife hold­er and thus the whole cut­ting sys­tem.

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Nano­carbides – En­han­cing tech­no­lo­gic­al prop­er­ties of tool steels by cryo­gen­ic treat­ment

Cryo­gen­ic treat­ment – ad­junct­ive treat­ment in harden­ing and tem­per­ing pro­cess to im­prove wear res­ist­ance and tough­ness of tool steels. Large amount of in­di­vidu­al stud­ies with dif­fer­ent res­ults leads to a con­tro­ver­sial dis­cus­sion dur­ing the last years. The ac­tu­al me­tal­lur­gic­al mech­an­isms in steels are not fully un­der­stood, and some ex­ist­ing hy­po­theses need to be veri­fied. There­fore, the po­ten­tial of these tech­no­lo­gies for tool users has not been ex­ploited suf­fi­ciently.

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Tri­bo­Coat – Op­tim­iz­a­tion of highly stressed slid­ing con­tacts by the use of in­nov­at­ive coat­ing and sur­face con­cepts

Fre­quent mal­func­tion in the case of slid­ing con­tacts in the bound­ary fric­tion re­gime for dis­con­tinu­ous move­ments and high loads. High con­sequen­tial costs e.g. in con­tinu­ous cast­ing plants due to bear­ing dam­age, pro­duc­tion shut downs, loss of qual­ity. Anti-Fric­tion-Coat­ings offer a wide range of ad­vant­ages under these tri­bolo­gic­al con­di­tions.

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Ef­fi­cientE­LO – En­ergy and re­source ef­fi­cient elec­tro-gal­van­iz­ing of steel strip

Large amounts of zinc top dross occur as low-grade residues in the hot-dip gal­van­iz­ing lines. High ohmic power losses in elec­tro-gal­van­iz­ing lines are caused by a re­l­at­ive poor elec­tro­lyte con­duct­iv­ity.

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Mik­rokaltschmieden – Ap­plic­a­tion of ma­chine ham­mer peen­ing on pro­filed rolls for wear re­duc­tion and im­prove­ment of the sur­face qual­ity and di­men­sion­al sta­bil­ity of hot-rolled pro­files

Par­tially high wear rates can ap­pear at hot rolling of pro­files due to thermal and mech­an­ic­al stresses. High mech­an­ic­al ab­ra­sion and in­creased sur­face dis­rup­tion at groove zones with high levels of form­ing. This leads to de­creased sur­face qual­ity and tol­er­ance vari­ations and in­creased groove and roll changes.

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In­noZun – De­vel­op­ment of a pro­cess com­bin­a­tion to im­prove the sur­face qual­ity of pickled stain­less steel strip using ad­dit­ives for sec­ond­ary scale con­di­tion­ing in com­bin­a­tion with new in­nov­at­ive de­scal­ing and pick­ling pro­cesses

The metal­work­ing in­dustry is faced with in­creas­ing de­mands in terms of ef­fi­ciency and product qual­ity. In order to ful­fil these ex­pect­a­tions, con­cepts have been de­veloped for years to coun­ter­act the acid and en­ergy con­sump­tion dur­ing the un­avoid­able chem­ic­al pick­ling pro­cess.

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BOF­de­Ph­os – Con­trol of De­phos­phor­isa­tion in BOF pro­cess

The End-point con­trol of the Oxy­gen Steel­mak­ing Con­vert­er (BOF) pro­cess is mainly based on res­ults of a stat­ic charge cal­cu­la­tion and ob­ser­va­tion of de­car­bur­isa­tion based on off-gas data. In­form­a­tion on de­phos­phor­isa­tion be­ha­viour and achieve­ment of the final P tar­get value is nor­mally not avail­able. Thus quite often a reblow due to high P con­tent, and also for steel tem­per­at­ure ad­just­ment is re­quired.

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Opt­iBlaFIns – Ana­lys­is of blast fur­nace hearth state

Bad hearth con­di­tion in­flu­ences en­ergy con­sump­tion, op­er­a­tion­al sta­bil­ity, hot metal qual­ity and pro­ductiv­ity. From earli­er re­search pro­jects off­line sim­u­la­tion tools are avail­able which de­scribe the com­plex prozesses in the BF hearth.

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NanoZunKon­Lub – Ap­plic­a­tion of nan­o­particle en­hanced coat­ings for scale con­di­tion­ing in die for­ging pro­cesses in order to op­tim­ize the tri­bolo­gic­al sys­tem

Scale form­a­tion of 1 to 2 % dur­ing re­heat­ing of the ma­ter­i­al for die for­ging pro­cess lead to ma­ter­i­al losses. Sur­face de­fects are caused by forged-in scale residues. Wear of dies is caused by highly ab­ras­ive prop­er­ties of the scale.

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Hiper­Scale – High per­form­ance hot rolling pro­cess through steel grade-de­pend­ent in­flu­en­cing of the scale form­a­tion and flex­ible de­scal­ing con­trol

Scale form­a­tion dur­ing re­heat­ing leads to ma­ter­i­al losses. Poor de­scalab­il­ity and scale re­sid­uals lead to sur­face impair­ments and de­fects of the rolled product. In­ter­re­la­tions for scale form­a­tion and scale prop­er­ties dur­ing re­heat­ing and de­scal­ing are not known prop­erly. Ef­fi­ciency of de­scal­ing pro­cess can­not be veri­fied.

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Dis­sTec - Val­or­isa­tion and dis­sem­in­a­tion of tech­no­lo­gies for meas­ure­ment, mod­el­ling and con­trol in sec­ond­ary me­tal­lurgy

The evol­u­tion of sec­ond­ary steel­mak­ing pro­cesses and its in­tro­duc­tion to the steel­mak­ing plants brought about the ef­fect­ive pro­duc­tion of high qual­ity steel grades. Today’s im­port­ance of sec­ond­ary steel­mak­ing pro­cesses in Europe is also re­flec­ted in the re­search activ­it­ies in this tech­no­lo­gic­al area. With­in the frame­work of the ECSC and RFCS steel re­search pro­gramme, in the last 20 years around 50 pro­jects with the focus on sec­ond­ary me­tal­lurgy have been fun­ded.

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SUS­TAINTAP – Blast fur­nace sus­tained tap­ping prac­tice

Un­known po­s­i­tion and void­age of the dead man. Un­cer­tainty con­cern­ing li­quid levels of iron and slag. Hearth wear cal­cu­lated only in 2D sec­tions. In­flu­ence of hearth flow on wear cal­cu­la­tions.

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S5 – In­teg­rated thick­ness and flat­ness con­trol

The reg­u­la­tions of the strip thick­ness and the strip planar­ity in­flu­ence each other. The planar­ity con­trol­ler is ar­ti­fi­cially slowed down to re­duce the band thick­ness dis­turb­ances.

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HER­OLL – Pre­ven­tion of hy­dro­gen em­brit­tle­ment of cold rolling rolls by im­proved work roll ma­ter­i­al and lub­ric­ant con­fig­ur­a­tion

In­creas­ing num­ber of cold rolling work rolls fail­ures, in­duced through hy­dro­gen. Dam­ages and/or fail­ures can also cause dan­ger­ous ex­plo­sions of the work roll bod­ies (spalling; safety as­pect). One reas­on is the in­creased mech­an­ic­al loads dur­ing pro­cessing. The dif­fi­culties will even in­crease as the pro­duc­tion rates of ma­ter­i­als are rising and the pro­tect­ive plat­ing ma­ter­i­als are sup­posed to be banned.

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