9th ECCC European Continuous Casting Conference – ECCC 2017

Puyang steel, one of China’s leading private steel producers, extended its grade portfolio to very demanding steels with the new caster being designed for a yearly production of 1.2 million tons of not only peritectic micro-alloyed and high-strength steels, but high carbon and boron-alloyed steels, high quality construction steels and pipeline grades. The slab format covers a medium size range of 150 and 180 millimeters in thickness and 1,000 - 2,300 millimeters in width. Furthermore the caster is prepared for a future retrofit to twin-strand casting for supplying a wider market. SMS group supplied the single-strand caster implementing Puyang’s wishes and demands in a highly flexible and above all economical way. The new X-Cast® plant and process equipment as well as the X-Pact® electrical and automation systems are tailor-made to fit in the existing buildings. Basing on this the technology packages HD moldTC (mold monitoring), hydraulic mold oscillation and Dynamic Soft Reduction® make it possible to cast the large variety of steel grades and ensure the production of slabs with high surface and internal quality. The straight-forwardness of Hebei Puyang, few interfaces and efficient communication with SMS group resulted in a steep start-up curve leading to a splendidly running production since then. We inform about the project in general and its present status.