In order to improve the blast furnaces stability and productivity, industrial trials with the aim of reducing the circulating alkali load in the furnace and tests on a laboratory scale have been performed. The mechanical behaviour (fines generation) during reduction in presence of alkalis of various iron materials loaded in the blast furnace (sinter, pellets, iron ores) has been characterized with a set of Boris trials.

What will the electric arc furnace of 2010 look like? A Delphi study, conducted within a working group of IISI, has produced trend and contrasted scenarios that project a spectrum of furnace images. The EAF is indeed the metallurgical reactor that has the largest growth potential in the middle term, both in terms of production capacity and, correlatively, of technology evolution.

The feed head continuous casting technology was jointly developed by CRM and Irsid for the long products. Since 1996, CRM has undertaken developments aiming at transferring the technology to flat products. Casting trials were performed on the simulator of CRM equipped with a slab mould. The results obtained, concerning as well the technological aspects as the product quality, are very promising.

A consortium led by VAI erected for HADEED (Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia) a new production facility for a wide range of flat rolled products, on a turnkey basis. This giant plant includes a steelshop, a continuous caster, a hot rolling mill, cold rolling facilities, as well as all necessary side installations. The project is characterized by a series of highly new technological solutions and a high degree of automation of the production process (process and quality control).

A new 400,000 ton/year 2-stand temper and double reduction mill has started production in April 1999 at Dongbu Steel Asan Bay Works in Korea. This facility produces skin-passed and double reduced tin mill black plates. The line incorporates state of the art technologies including AC motor driven 4-high CVC mills and computer integrated automation systems. The line has the capability of producing products 600 mm to 1,250 mm wide and in gauges from 0.15 mm to 1.0 mm for skin-passed products and from 0.15 mm to 0.36 mm for double-reduced products. An outline and the features of the line as well as the quality characteristics of the products are presented.

The forthcoming European legislation on cars and environment protection has an impact on the materials used for the production of cars. Weight reduction to limit the emission of green house effect gases is possible using new designs with recently developed high strength steels. Examples are described for the body in white and for hang-on panels. Specific steel products provide increased energy absorption capacity and stiffness, and the present coating technologies provide sheets with the required corrosion resistance. Methods are also developed to produce good quality scrap from the vehicles at their life end; they lead to a high degree of material recycling and to a reduction of waste.

This paper reports on some aspects of a ENI Group feasibility study of high pressure (> 100 bar) - high strength pipelines designed for transportation of large quantities of natural gas over long distances (> 2500 km). The experimental results obtained in collaboration with Centro Sviluppo Materiali (CSM) and ILVA L.T. clearly showed the full reliability of modern high strength linepipe materials of X70-X80 grade, with respect to fracture behaviour, even at low temperature, in very high pressure regimes.