The environmental diagnosis of the coke plant site in Homécourt has been carried out over the last 15 years. Bail Industrie has selected two zones on the site for a remediation program in view of their further redevelopment. The weakly polluted grounds were submitted to a bio treatment, while the more polluted grounds were treated by thermal desorption. Tars have been incinerated off site. To assess the effectiveness of the treatment, percolation tests are carried out.

PARE has developed an electrode wear monitoring system. They have implemented such systems at the three electric arc furnaces (two DC, one AC) located in Luxembourg. The goal of these systems is twofold: first it allows the steelmaker to continuously monitor its graphite consumption and relate it to the furnace operating conditions; second it allows a feedback to the electrode suppliers for quality monitoring.

Aceralia blast furnace A suffered a 28-days emergency repair in September 2004, due to accelerated wear of the hearth walls and severe damage of the cast iron staves at the bosh area. Considering the shortage of supplies, Aceralia resorted to non conventional repair methods in order to prolong the campaign by one year, until full relining: small format carbon bricks and carbon ramming mass for the hearth and tapholes and steel staves at the bosh.

The rotating lance, tested in the CaO-Mg and CaC2-Mg processes, promotes a 20% and 30% increase, respectively, in the desulphurization rate, a 50% reduction of temperature drop, and a reduction of metal splash occurrences. A criterion was developed that takes into account the equipment dimensions and the mass flow rates of gas and desulphurization material, with the objective of transposing the results obtained at Usiminas steel shop n°1 desulphurization station, to other industrial plants. Furthermore, it allows simulations to be made with the objective of optimizing the pig iron desulphurization processes that use the above mentioned materials as desulphurization agents.

The new Brazilian free energy market and the possibilities afforded by the carbon credits motivated a reassessment of Top Recovery Turbines (TRT), to be installed on blast furnaces 2 and 3 of CST. These turbines could recover about 16 MW electric energy.
Several options have been considered, including energy selling, internal consumption and through Arcelor Brazil consumption, taking also carbon credits into account.

The “airtight” technology allows energy savings but hinders direct process observation inside the vessel and information on the unmelted scrap volume and on possible skull formation at the furnace walls. To overcome this difficulty, a new concept is proposed, based on mounting a camera and an endoscope inside an existing burner. This technique has been first implemented on the 155 tons DC furnace in the PROFILARBED Esch-Belval plant. Typical images of the melting phase are presented. Scrap movement mechanisms in the burner produced cavity have been displayed in real time. Operational benefits combine the appraisal of scrap basket charging time and anticipation of abnormal melting behaviour.

A new SSMR process to produce ultra-fine-grained hot strip is introduced, featuring: closely spaced rolling stands, continuous high speed rolling with moderately large reductions rolling, rapid interpass cooling and rapid finish rolling cooling. An ultra-fine-grained CMn steel strip (1μm) is obtained with a 700 MPa yield stress. A proper choice of the work roll diameter and a careful control of the friction coefficient should make it possible to keep the rolling force at a level compatible with the design capacity of a conventional rolling mill.

As cast CC slabs of microalloyed steels are prone to surface cracking. Precipitation phenomena, initiated during solidification, reduce ductility at high temperature. The size, morphology and distribution of precipitates in as cast semis depend on solidification rate, on secondary cooling, straightening and cooling off the caster. Microsegregation of the microalloying additions to the interdendritic boundaries during solidification increases precipitation temperature. Results are presented concerning the effect of solidification and cooling on precipitates characteristics in semis. The characterization of precipitates is quite satisfactory although it could not be clearly correlated with surface quality.


Flameless oxyfuel combustion used in industrial furnaces gives a uniform temperature and heat flux distribution along with high available heat. NOx emissions can be maintained at extremely low levels, meeting the most demanding environmental regulations. Since 2003 the experimental results from flameless oxyfuel technology have been proven in industrial installations such as reheating and annealing furnaces as well in ladle preheating stations.

A comprehensive approach is presented to optimise coking coal blends. It includes a first calculation of CRI and CSR for the set of coals, confirmed by laboratory carbonisation tests and later completed by carbonisation tests at pilot scale. This approach is expected to afford a helpful instrument for the coke plant operator.

The quality and quantity of steel treated in an RH vessel can be enhanced through the optimization of the metallurgical reactions occurring during vacuum treatment and with an improvement in the equipment design and plant layout to reduce production-time losses. The enlargement of the diameter of the snorkel and vessel contribute to an accelerated reaction rate inside the vessel and to an increase in the overall productivity of an RH plant. With the introduction of twin-station RH plants in connection with a quick vesselexchange design, the loss of production time due to ladle transfer, vessel exchange and snorkel maintenance can be significantly reduced.

A project was started in 2002 to improve the hot metal desulphurisation by ladle treatment, whose underlying mechanism was analyzed by a process model based on fundamentals. This allowed a 10% reduction of reagent consumption. To reduce the treatment costs, calcium carbide was replaced by lime. Further results indicate the need to improve the absorption of reaction products into the slag. Lime post injection resulted in lower final sulfur content and improved slag removal.

Standard EAF operate with a large amount or air ingress (on the order of 30 000 Nm3 for 150 t of steel). This air is at ambient temperature thus, the nitrogen content and the non-reactive oxygen are only heated through the furnace and exit with the fumes at high temperature (1000°C). This brings about significant thermal losses. Reference and airtight trials were carried out with the 6-t EAF of Arcelor Research for assessing the gains related to airtight furnace operation.

An innovative modelling strategy has been developed and validated to help the design of steel reheating furnaces. A set of complementary simulation tools has been used to rethink the furnace concept, namely the Digit@l FurnaceTM, from the burners to the global energy system optimisation. Several Digit@l FurnacesTM are now in operation on hot rolling mills. Advantages in terms of pollutant emissions, operation costs and flexibility have been demonstrated on site.

Strip width necking may be quite significant on cold rolling mills. To compensate for this unpredicted phenomenon, hot strips are often ordered with an over-width with resulting substantial over costs, for trimming in particular. Based upon numerical simulation supported by rolling trials, the main factors that effect strip width variation have been quantified: edge drop, transverse stress relaxation, thermal contraction. Potential width actuators to be implemented on industrial cold rolling lines have been identified.

The control of oxygen and fossil fuels injections, taking into account real furnace conditions at each step of the melt, is essential for EAF improvement. Based on near IR Laser- diode spectroscopy, a system enabling dynamic and continuous CO and CO2 monitoring of EAF fumes during the whole melt for long-term operations has been developed. Several industrial trials are reported, the technology is described and the results are discussed.

Oxygen usage has played a crucial role in the ongoing EAF process improvement and has enabled furnace operators to optimize the chemical energy input, reaching unprecedented efficiencies and productivity. This article will present the fundamental principles governing the design of an optimized chemical energy system through scrap oxy-cutting and melting, decarburisation, post-combustion and slag foaming. It will be illustrated with industrial results obtained at the Vallourec Mannesmann Saint-Saulve site, where a PyreJetTM and ALARCTM PC system, using the newly designed DRAGON Panel, has been recently commissioned.

Considering the development of 56" line pipes, the barrel length of the work rolls of the DH finishing stand had been extended up to 4.8 m in 1981. This made it possible to roll plates with a maximum width of 4,700 mm. The 5.5 m roughing stand had been commissioned in 1985. With a view to further improve the rolling process, DH recently decided to revamp and modernize the existing finishing stand instead of ordering and commissioning a new stand. One and a half year experience with the revamped finishing mill confirm that this option is quite satisfactory and affords high productivity and availability.

Gas-stirred treatment makes the ladle vibrate. Monitoring of the vibration has been studied in details: it is an industrial non-intrusive technique to control the process efficiency. Optimum gas stirring conditions can be defined, in terms of global kinetics of inclusion removal at low vibration level.