Published by
January 2012
Welcome to the first issue of 2012! The Jan/Feb edition of Steel Times International contains features on Raw Materials and Continuous Casting.
The Raw Materials section includes a report on the Intertech Pira 15th Annual Coke Summit, an article on combining coke and ironmaking methods to reduce emissions during production, and an overview of level sensors for raw materials and its application in Sail plants.
Continuous Casting includes articles on the 4th generation Danieli thin slab caster, and improved online water leakage detection and flow monitoring for caster rolls.
All this as well as reports from Stahl 2011, Metal-Expo 2011 and the usual round up of news and updates from around the globe.
Front cover pic courtesy of Tenova
Recent News
Russia’s Steel Leader Celebrates 80th Birthday
Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works marked a milestone on 1 February; its 80th anniversary since the start up of its first blast furnace in 1932.
Steel end-users show resilience despite recessionary environment
Eurofer’s Q1-2012 economic and steel market outlook shows that while the EU economy probably slipped into a shallow recession in the final quarter 2011, activity of downstream steel-users has remained rather firm.
Outokumpu to lead merger with ThyssenKrupp Stainless
Outokumpu and Inoxum, the stainless steel unit of ThyssenKrupp AG, plan to combine under the operational leadership of Outokumpu.
China drives continuing growth in stainless steel output
Official figures for global stainless steel production in 2011 are estimated to have reached another all-time high total of 32.05Mt, 3.1% above the previous record, of 2010.
Recent Features
Fray International Symposium
Seldom does a conference cover such a wide range of materials subjects as the recent symposium organised in honour of Prof Derek Fray, Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge UK. Neither are so many companies and organisations prepared
to associate their name with the event by sponsorship. 184 professional bodies, academic institutes and publications – including Steel Times International, supported the event. A report by Fathi Habashi*
The sustainability footprint of steelmaking by-products
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), originally derived to assess the carbon footprint of manufactured goods, is being applied to production processes where it can be manipulated in a variety of ways each yielding a different result to claim the lowest carbon footprint for a particular process. This paper uses the example of blast furnace slag as a replacement for cement clinker and shows, depending on the method of allocation, a saving of 0.24tCO2/t of steel produced or 0.64tCO2/t of cement produced. By J P Birat*
The skies may have brightened but the gloom lingers on
A report of the 26th Steel Success Strategies, New York
Stadco – A return to output for automotive pressings
Stadco, UK’s largest independent supplier of automotive body-in-white pressings, celebrated the opening of its fifth UK production site located in a former Japanese owned pressworks –
refurbishing the factory buildings, services and two press lines in just three months following an upturn in premium car production in UK.