Continuous Casting and Rolling Plant with Billet Storage Furnace
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing plants for producing long rolled metal products face productivity losses and increased costs due to interruptions in the rolling mill, requiring stops in the casting process and resulting in scrap material, which also wastes energy.
Innovation Solution
A continuous casting and rolling plant configuration with a high-speed crystallizer producing billets of varying sections, including rectangular shapes, and a maintenance unit like a box furnace to store billets at temperature during mill stoppages, allowing continuous casting without interruption and reducing scrap.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the rolling mill stops for maintenance or accidents, then the rolling process must be interrupted, but this causes loss of production and increases scrap material
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a storage area positioned between the continuous casting machine and the rolling mill, allowing billets to be stored in advance. When the rolling mill stops for maintenance or accidents, pre-stored billets can be fed into the rolling mill, maintaining production continuity without interrupting the continuous casting process. This preliminary storage action resolves the contradiction by decoupling the operational dependency between casting and rolling.
Solution Approach 2:
The storage area acts as an intermediary buffer between the continuous casting machine and the rolling mill. This intermediate zone allows independent operation of the two units, enabling the rolling mill to stop for maintenance while the casting machine continues producing billets that are stored for later use. The intermediary storage resolves the contradiction by mediating the operational mismatch between casting continuity and rolling interruptions.
2Productivity
If the casting machine stops when the rolling mill stops, then production loss occurs, but continuing casting without storage causes material accumulation and energy waste
Solution Approach 1:
The storage area enables preliminary accumulation of billets at controlled temperatures before rolling. This allows the casting machine to maintain continuous operation and feed billets into storage, rather than stopping and wasting the thermal energy already invested in the liquid steel. The preliminary storage function resolves the contradiction by providing a buffer that accepts continuous casting output without requiring immediate rolling processing.
3Loss of substance
If scrap material is generated during stoppages, then material yield decreases, but preventing stoppages reduces maintenance needs
Solution Approach 1:
The storage area enables continuous useful action by allowing the rolling mill to operate continuously from pre-stored billets during maintenance periods. This continuity prevents the need to scrap accumulated hot material that would otherwise cool and become unusable during rolling mill stoppages. The storage buffer maintains the continuity of useful action by decoupling casting from rolling operations.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of discarding scrap material that would result from rolling mill stoppages, the storage area recovers all cast billets by storing them at controlled temperatures. This recovery mechanism ensures that no material is wasted, as billets can be held in storage indefinitely and fed to the rolling mill when it becomes available, transforming what would be scrap into recoverable product.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This configuration minimizes production losses, increases plant utilization, reduces energy consumption, and ensures better product quality by maintaining billets at temperature for later processing, enabling seamless production resumption without stopping the casting process.
Implementation Method 1
maintaining billets at temperature for later processing
Implementation Method 2
maintenance unit like a box furnace to store billets at temperature
Data Source
Figure 1~3
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Figure 6~7
AI summary
Method and plant (10) for making long metal rolled products, in which a continuous casting is provided made by a single casting machine (11), defining a casting axis, to cast a product with a quadrangular or equivalent section, a reduction of the section in a rolling mill (16) defining a rolling axis substantially coinciding with the casting axis, and a selective accumulation and maintenance at temperature of a plurality of segments of cast product sheared to size in a misaligned position with respect to the casting axis and/or the rolling axis, inside a maintenance box furnace (14), for a time correlated to a condition of temporary interruption of the reduction step, so as to allow continuity of the continuous casting step.