Technical and economic aspects of development and running ladle treatment aggregates

Abstract

Modern ladle treatment of liquid steel represents a wide set of technological processes and aggregates, as well as units and systems, many of them having significant cost and need expensive maintenance. Technical and economic advantages, obtained at various variants of steel ladle treatment considered, the advantages being at both metal products producers and consumers. Factors of production expenses saving at the stage of steel smelting due to transferring of the steel refining operation from melting aggregates to the stage of ladle treatment considered. It was noted, that in the process of continuous casting of metal, subjected to ladle refining, the steel casting improves considerably due to keeping the narrow temperature interval, decreased content and globular form of nonmetallic inclusions. In its turn it results in a decrease of rejects, an increase of billet drawing speed possibility and correspondent increase of production capacity, reduction of the number of the casted billet shell breaks. Technical and economic advantages of melt treatment by cored wire or by all-metal injection wire with stuff shown. Decrease of rejects is an important factor for cost decreasing. For example, application of calcium-aluminum cored wire at a steel-works enabled to decrease the rejects of well-casings made of 20ГЮ steel by a factor of 1.5–2. In many cases production of state-of-the-art steel grades, for example IF-steels, being the base of the modern motor-car construction, is not possible without ladle treatment. Therefore, absence of ladle treatment elements at a big steelworks can lead to considerable losses.