JSW orders high-speed billet caster from SMS Concast
New order from Jindal Group
JSW Steel Ltd. in Toranagallu, India, belonging to Jindal Group, has awarded SMS Concast, a company of SMS group, an order covering a 5(6)-strand high-speed billet caster. This project is part of a bigger expansion plan, and the main objective is a productivity increase.
The existing steel plant consists of a 160-ton electric arc furnace, ladle furnace, billet caster and rolling mill and shall increase the annual production to 1,500,000 tons of steel after installation of the new billet caster. The caster will be designed for fast casting of square billets with an edge length of 165 millimeters.
SMS Concast’s caster configuration will allow the common use of spares in two different steel meltshops. This is one big feature to decrease OPEX.
Furthermore, latest technology will be applied to reach the specified productivity and OPEX targets. One special product is the low- maintenance oscillation drive called CONDRIVE, another the advanced INVEX® mold technology.
The CONDRIVE mold oscillation represents a totally new approach combining the advantages of hydraulic and mechanic drives in one. Due to the innovative torque drive, the amplitude, frequency and oscillation profile can be adjusted online and independently. Thus it grants full functionality, however without the hydraulic system drawbacks in terms of maintenance and piping. In this context, CONDRIVE is one part of the advanced maintenance concept with a view to reduced spare parts inventory.
Regarding productivity, the SMS Concast-developed INVEX® mold allows for very high strand throughputs in the area of 790 kg/min. The special tube geometry and enhanced water cooling features allow the mold to achieve efficient heat transfer and thus a more uniform solidification at the faces and in the corner areas, thus enabling higher casting speeds.
“Considering the very good performance of the existing SMS Concast equipment, its advanced technology and reduced OPEX, we have decided to go for another co-operation in order to implement our expansion plan,” says Mr. Purushottam Prasad from JSW Steel Ltd.
SMS group is a group of companies internationally active in plant construction and mechanical engineering for the steel and nonferrous metals industry. It has some 14,000 employees who generate worldwide sales of about EUR 3 billion. The sole owner of the holding company SMS GmbH is the Familie Weiss Foundation.
