July 2006 — Taiwanese steel producer Dragon Steel Corp. recently awarded the Siemens Group Industrial Solutions and Services (I&S) a series of orders for the design and supply of a new sinter plant, blast furnace and slab caster. Contract prices were not disclosed.
These metallurgical facilities will be part of a new iron and steel works that will be built in the harbor area of Taichung. Following start-up, Dragon Steel will be able to enter the flat-steel market sector with a production capacity of 2.5 million tons of high-quality slabs per year.
Dragon Steel currently produces approximately 800,000 tons of carbon-steel grades per year that are cast as billets, blooms or beam blanks followed by rolling into heavy sections. As part of a capacity expansion campaign to enter into the flat-product steel sector, Dragon Steel awarded the Siemens I&S division VAI separate contracts; VAI headquarters in Austria will be responsible for the design and installation of the sinter plant, and VAI UK Ltd will engineer and supply the blast furnace and twin-strand slab caster.
The sinter plant will be designed with a nominal production capacity of 7,440 tonnes of sinter per day. The plant will incorporate the latest sintering technologies to assure a high and constant sinter quality, low operating costs and minimum environmental impact. These include an Intensive Mixing and Granulation System (IMGS), a Twin-Layer Charging System and a selective waste-gas recirculation system to reduce the volume of sinter waste gas released to the environment (down to 1,260 Nm³/tonne of sinter at nominal production capacity). VAI will also install integrated desulphurization, denitrogenization and dioxin-removal facilities.
A blast furnace with a hearth diameter of 12 meters and an inner volume of 3,274 cubic meters will be supplied to enable the production of 2.5 million tonnes of iron per year. The blast furnace scope of supply includes a coal-injection system, stoves and electric air blowers, and a top-gas energy turbine for energy recovery and use within the steel works. VAI UK Ltd will also supply a blast furnace gas holder to store gas for application throughout the steel works, dedusting systems, the latest hydraulic taphole drills and Level 1 control and automation systems.
With its new twin-strand slab caster, Dragon Steel will cast a total of 2.6 million tonnes of high-quality slabs will be cast per year. The 250-mm thick slabs will range in width from 950 to 1,680 mm, and steel grades will range from low- to high-carbon steels, peritectic grades, microalloyed and HSLA (high-strength, low-alloy) grades. Technological packages will include the DynaFlex oscillator for flexible adjustment of oscillation parameters; the MoldExpert system for online automatic breakout prediction and strand-shell friction monitoring; LevCon automatic mold-level control; and DynaWidth for online and remote roll-gap adjustments to enable slab-thickness changes and dynamic soft reduction for internal slab-quality improvements.
Start-up of the new works is scheduled for December 2009.
Dragon Steel Corp. is a 70% subsidiary company of China Steel Corp., the largest steel producer in Taiwan.
The VAI group, a division of the Siemens Group Industrial Solutions and Services (I&S), is one of the world's leading engineering and plant-building companies for the iron and steel industry as well as for the flat-product-rolling sector of the aluminum industry. VAI, derived from the company Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau, Austria, provides a comprehensive range of supplies and services for all related technological processes and integrated automation solutions for the entire life-cycle of metallurgical plants.
The Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services Group (I&S) is the integrator of systems and solutions for industrial and infrastructure facilities and global service provider for the plant and projects business covering planning, installation, operation and the entire life cycle. I&S uses the electrical and technical products of other Siemens Groups in order to enhance productivity and improve competitiveness of companies in the sectors of metallurgy, water treatment, pulp and paper, oil and gas, marine engineering, open-cast mining, airport logistics, postal automation, intelligent traffic systems and industrial services. In fiscal 2005 (to September 30) I&S employed a total of 31,700 people worldwide and achieved total sales of EUR 5.390 billion.