The Arab Steel Summit, that convened in Abu Dhabi in April, gave us another opportunity to review the situation of the Arab Iron and Steel Industry, with regard to the present World economic context.
We will address: The World situation of steel production, focusing on the Arab Countries; 
The related situation of steel consumption;
The steel trade, including imports, exports and prices;
The consequences for technology and economy. 


Uncontrolled pushing force can lead to severe degradation of coke oven walls. To measure the pushing force a torque sensor can easily be installed on the driving shaft of the pushing machine.
The pushing curve shows a typical first peak which corresponds to the end of the coke cake compression phase and the beginning of the coke cake movement. Generally after this peak the pushing force sharply decreases as coke moves, coke weight decreases and oven taper prevents from wall friction.
The first peak is related to the coke cake properties.
Pushing curves may show a progressive increase of pushing force or further peaks depending on the pushing machine and the general condition of the oven.
Safe limit of pushing force first peak is around 1.5 times the coke weight.

Surface corner cracks are sometimes observed on slabs of high strength low alloyed steel grades, requiring expensive scarfing. To avoid surface crack formation, we can act on the steel intrinsic ductility loss through the limitation of S and N contents: S < 30 ppm and N < 40 ppm are well adapted thresholds. A Ti/N ratio higher than 3.6 and a limitation of Al*N product lead to a significant improvement of the quality results. In addition, the continuous casting process must be optimized. It aims at limiting the thermomechanical strains faced by the slab surface during solidification and cooling, particularly when the slab corner temperature is in the range of the ductility trough. The main process actuators are the mould powder, the secondary cooling curves and the limitation of the misalignments in the top part of the caster, especially the transitions between the mould foot-rolls, the vertical and the bending segments.

The cracking behaviour of the oxide layer formed during hot rolling has been studied together with different combinations of process parameters in order to find their single influence on the surface quality and formation of oxide defects. Several trials have been performed on the CRM pilot line to study in detail the impact of strip reduction, strip temperature, entry scale thickness, roll degradation, lubrication, skin cooling, chemical composition and humidity on the scale behaviour. In general the degree of deformation, entry scale thickness and rolling temperatures are the more important parameters and the importance decreases in that order.

Non destructive testing techniques, like Eddy Current and Ultrasound, are common practice today in any roll shop. Pomini Tenova, with its considerable experience gained installing more than 350 inspection systems throughout the world, designed its new generation inspection system to meet growing customer demands for system performance, adherence to quality, health and safety. The new Inspektor.NET system is the result of an intelligent manufacturing project which guarantees improved performance in Eddy Current and Ultrasound scans.