Reliable, consistent and low-cost metal production

The pressure to improve both efficiency and end-product quality continues to rise in the iron and steel industries, and places increasing demands upon producers, energy consumers and investors. This is particularly true for plant modernization with new requirements and expectations for plant performance and maintenance, personal safety and environmental compliance.

 With advanced process control and automation solutions and innovative metallurgical products, ABB helps you to optimize your process to achieve maximum productivity, plant availability and environmental compatibility.

Basic oxygen furnace

Optimizing BOF performance with advanced technological control solutions

Maximizing the performance of the basic oxygen furnace (BOF) helps minimize the reheating and cooling of steel during the steelmaking process, and advanced control technology can contribute to the optimization of the furnace process. ABB offers an integrated control and automation solution for the entire BOF.

ABB's Extended Automation System 800xA ensures consistent BOF supervision and operation by measuring and controlling material handling, weighing system, the process, and gas cleaning of the furnace.

An integrated mathematical software model is applied to the process, including charging, oxygen blowing, heat balancing de-oxidization and alloy calculations. The result is minimized costs and reduced oxygen content, which helps to achieve higher-quality steel.

The effective human machine interface (HMI) allows operators to easily track material and gas emissions, obtain laboratory reports, heat trend reports and alarms, resulting in optimal BOF performance.

Electric arc furnace

Do you need an energy-saving solution? ArcSave®  is an innovative product that helps to optimize the energy efficiency of your electric arc furnace process.

Electric arc furnaces (EAF) for steelmaking are in great demand as they allow steel to be made from recycled scrap metal feed stock, provide a source of steel for mini-mills and are flexible to operate. ABB offers complete automation and power systems solutions for your EAF.

Reducing energy consumption is a high priority in the energy intensive steelmaking industry. ABB's ArcSave® electromagnetic stirring technology is a new and improved product that contributes to reducing energy consumption by up to 5 percent, improving productivity by up to 6 percent as well as optimizing overall metallurgical performance in the electric arc furnace process.

The ABB transformer for EAF operates under very harsh conditions, is able to withstand repeated short-circuit conditions and high-thermal stresses, and is protected against operational overvoltages.

ABB's automation and control system, when applied to EAFs, ensures control of the furnace transformer tap charger, cooling, furnace electrode, material handling, hydraulic flows, back filter and fume extraction to ensure optimal furnace performance. 

The ABB control system uses integrated mathematical models to calculate charging, meltdown, energy balance, and alloy and slag production. These mathematical models facilitate improved steel output quality,  as well as more accurate charging time and indication of the melting point.

Ladle furnace

Improve your LF performance with our integrated automation and control solution

The ladle furnace (LF) plays an important part in the stabilization of steel chemistry and is normally used to heat, hold and finish metal melts. ABB offers complete automation and power system solutions for the LF, including furnace transformers, rectifiers and advanced stirrers.

ABB’s automation and control system ensures optimal control and supervision throughout the process by measuring and controlling the furnace transformer, electrodes, cooling, material handling, extraction of back filter and fume function.

The integrated mathematical set-up models enable alloy calculation, energy balance, slag calculation and desulphurization. The use of these models gives the advantage of knowing exactly when to cast, better steel quality output, improved productivity and increased free openings of ladle.

ABB’s LF-EMS (electromagnetic stirrer) is customized to match the needs of different LF process steps. Operation of the LF-EMS is characterized by low stirring cost, reliable and safe operation, precise logistics and optimum conditions for reproducible production of high-quality steel.

Continuous casting

A full range of electromagnetic products for your casting machine

The stabilization of quality in semi-finished steel products during casting is crucial. ABB offers complete automation and power system solutions, as well as advanced stirrers for continuous casting.

The ABB control system enables maximum process productivity through production supervision and tracking, secondary cooling optimization, order management, strand shutdown optimization, cut to length optimization, quality prediction and evaluation and analysis registration.

As part of a fully integrated automation system, process computers equips the operator with fast and user friendly human machine interface (HMI) supervision of plant operation & scheduling, interplant pacing, production flow tracking, cast reference data setting, ladle and tannish tracking, product reporting and process data storage and processing.
 

ABB offers a comprehensive range of electromagnetic products that work to improve end-product quality, productivity and cost-efficiency in the continuous casting process.  For billet and bloom casters a wide selection of stirrers are available, the selection of which is based on target area for improvement.  For slab casting the very latest stirring and braking devices, such as the FC Mold and the EMBR electromagnetic brake deliver process improvements and optimize steel output.