China’s largest automotive steel producer has taken on international engineering group Fives to design and supply two Stein Digiflex vertical annealing furnaces for the steelmaker’s new 1,550mm cold rolling mill in Zhanjiang, Southeastern Guangdong.
One of the furnaces will be supplied to Baosteel’s 700kt/yr continuous annealing line and the second will service the company’s 270kt/yr continuous galvanizing line.
According to Fives, the Digiflex annealing furnaces sport a new compact design and offer ‘the most advanced combustion and cooling technologies’ including an AdvantTek WRT 2.0 combustion system.
“Such combustion technology benefits from high recuperative energy efficiency, low NOx emissions and usage of the site-generated fuels,” claims Fives, adding that it will allow Baosteel to ‘significantly reduce operational expenses, minimize environmental footprint and achieve its target of a ‘double excellent project’ and a highly efficient plant.
The 1,550mm cold rolling mill is part of phase ll of a 10Mt/yr steel project in the port of Zhanjiang, which involves a pickling line, a pickling line-tandem mill, a continuous annealing line and a continuous hot-dip galvanizing line. The mill will be ‘progressively put into action’ during 2016 and 2017 and, on completion, will have a 2.55Mt/yr capacity of coil for appliance and automotive sheet.
According to Fives, Baosteel has entrusted the engineering company with a total of five full processing lines since 2005 for its Baoshan and Zhanjiang plants.