ESSC & DUPLEX 2019

The demand in stainless and special steel products is growing continuously and there is a clear trend to new steel grades with higher tensile stresses, tight quality margins and new material properties observable. On the other hand the raw material situation tends in opposite direction, which means the steel producers are forced to process less sorted raw materials as well as more oxydic alloys for instance to reduce conversion costs to a competitive level. The production of smaller batches with very special compositions and dual or even multiple treatments requires an accurate detail planning of the production and the assigned resources along the process route. In addition it’s crucial that the treatment can be finished within the given time window to keep the scheduled plan. All these upcoming challenges need to be covered with an comprehensive automation concept, which allows the operator to administrate the complex melt shop production with interacting digital assistance tools. This means by selection of the desired steel grade and heat size the entire production and data chain is updated automatically. Based on steel grade date bases, production rules and digitalized operational knowledge the production schedule and the process route are adjusted from EAF, AOD, Secondary Metallurgy and Casting. Multiple heat treatments are distributed to available production aggregates, set-points for Level 2 and in the following Level 1 systems are generated including arcing, heating, flux addition and batch alloying based on detailed process models. State of the art steel making models provide optimization models for cost reduction and flexible material handling and give an online feedback of the ongoing process to the process supervisor. In addition some kind of prediction of the final analysis, the remaining time demand and exit values are also available. In combination with a comprehensive data management for data exchange and structured long-term storage the idea of flexible steelmaking for stainless and special steel fits fully to the global trend of Digitalization of the metals industry.