Billet Metallurgy

Billet metallurgy is the intermediate link between steelmaking and rolling, and is an important part of the steelmaking plant (or workshop). The process flow of continuous casting production is: ladle → tundish → mold → secondary cooling → billet straightening → cutting → roller table conveying → pusher → billet.

1. General

The application of billet metallurgy technology has completely changed the production process and logistics control of the steelmaking workshop, providing conditions for the continuity, automation, and application of information technology in workshop production, as well as greatly improving the environment and product quality. In addition, the development of continuous casting technology will also drive the development of other industries in the metallurgical system, and play an important role in simplifying and optimizing the organizational structure and product structure of enterprises.

2. Characteristics of Billet Metallurgy

The billet metallurgy process is a process in which molten steel releases sensible and latent heat under a continuous state and gradually solidifies into a certain shape of the billet. In the process of steel transformation from liquid to solid, there are momentum, heat, and mass transfer in the system, and deformation is caused by phase transformation, external force, and stress. These processes are very complex and often coupled or interact with each other. Compared with the die-casting blooming process, the continuous casting process has the following advantages.

(1) The process flow of billet production is simplified, and the molding, whole mold, ingot soaking, and billet opening processes of the die casting process are omitted. The capital investment can be saved by 40%, the floor area can be reduced by 30%, the operation cost can be saved by 40%, and the consumption of refractory materials can be reduced by 15%.

(2) The metal yield is improved, and on the one hand, the loss of billet head and tail cutting is greatly reduced; On the other hand, the billet produced is closer to the shape of the final product, eliminating the heating and billet opening process of the die casting process, reducing the metal loss, and increasing the metal yield by about 9%.

(3) The energy consumption in the production process is reduced, which can save the fuel consumption of the ingot opening soaking pit and reduce the energy consumption by 1/4~1/2.

(4) The level of mechanization and automation of the production process has been improved, creating favorable conditions for the improvement of labor productivity and the upgrading of modern management of enterprises.

3. Development of  Billet Metallurgy Technology in China

China is an early country in the world to research and apply continuous casting technology. Since the 1950s, research on billet metallurgy technology has been started. In the early 1960s, it entered the industrial application stage of continuous casting technology. The statistics in 1982 show that the world average continuous casting ratio is about 30%. After the 1980s, China's continuous casting technology entered a new development period, introducing a number of advanced billets, slabs, and horizontal continuous casters from abroad. In the mid-1980s, China had the first fully continuous casting steel plant - the Second Steelmaking Plant of WISCO. In recent years, China's continuous casting technology has developed rapidly. By 2005, all provinces (cities and autonomous regions) except Hainan, Ningxia, and Tibet had continuous casting production, and the continuous casting ratio reached 97.5%.

China is one of the countries that developed thin slab continuous casting technology earlier and has made major breakthroughs in the three core technologies of thin slab continuous casting mold, submerged nozzle and mold powder The thin slab continuous casting mold with double arc, elliptical and conical inner cavity curved surface has been developed and used in industrial production.

4. Prospect of Billet Metallurgy Technology

In terms of production capacity: with the industrialization of electromagnetic combined mold, non-sinusoidal vibration, soft reduction, and solidification dynamic control technology, the output of slab caster reaches 2 million tons/stream · year and that of square billet caster reaches 400000 tons/stream · year, forming a production process of single caster to single continuous mill In terms of variety structure: with the application of electromagnetic technology and solidification control technology, continuous casting varieties are expected to achieve 100% of the varieties, organizational control, internal and surface quality control, and efficient production of all defect free billets In the field of electromagnetic continuous casting: With the development of superconducting technology, it will be possible to industrialize the electromagnetic confinement mold and electromagnetic shock excitation device for casting steel. On this basis, it is expected to develop a mold-free, vibration-free continuous casting machine with an arbitrary section shape.

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