Empowering Baosteel to Expand its International Market Share
Electrolytic tinplate (ETP) is one of high-end products by cold rolling and deep processing, a new type of high-value-added corrosion resistant material. Due to its non-toxicity and excellent corrosion resistance, Electrolytic tinplate has found its wide applications in food packaging, beverage packaging, medical and chemical packaging industries. With the expectation of replacing aluminum packaging gradually, the prospects of this new material is very high.
From the view of the development trend of the technology, both tin plate products and tin coating are getting thinner. As a result, the production technology is becoming more complex and difficult and has become the high-level production line in the manufacturing field of thin electrolytic tinplate in metallurgical industry. In addition, canning and printing processes using tinplate sheets as raw material are extremely sensitive to strip shape. The cold rolling process of black steel also produces a considerable amount of internal stress in strip steel, causing tinplate flexures easily when such stress is released during downstream deep processing of shearing.
The use of REDEX Tension Multi Roll Leveler eliminate the flatness defects of strip steel in Metallurgy and improve the shape of strip. Therefore, it is common to include a REDEX Tension Multi Roll Leveler in the tinplate production line. It has become one of the benchmarks that measure the technical level of the electrolytic tinplate production line.
Collaborating with Redex, Baosteel made breakthrough in mass production.
With the development of tinplate applications, many domestic steel mills have begun to construct electrolytic tinplating units. Some have even introduced large advanced continuous tinplating units with high output. Baoshan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. (“Baosteel”) is one of them.
Currently, Baosteel has become one of the leading domestic companies in the field of tinplates and double cold reduction (DCR) technology. In order to better meet the production requirement on the flatness of DCR tinplates (the product after rolling process/Annealing/Single or Double Redution SkinPass ), Baosteel planned to upgrade its 1420 cold rolling No. 2 tinplating unit (C217) to one that can produce both SR (Single Reduction) and DR (Double Reduction) tinplated products.
The C217 unit of Baosteel is reported to have a total production capacity of 180,000 t/a. The unit uses continuous annealing (CA) black steel strip and DCR black steel strip. While the original design of C217 unit did not include a Tension Leveler, it was unable to run mass production. As such, there was an urgent need to add a tension Multi roll leveler to the production line.
Because of the tight schedule and the production line having the necessity of running continuously, Baosteel set the bar high in open tendering.
First of all, the vendor needed to provide the tension leveler and supporting equipment that are advanced, reliable, easy to maintain (including front and back tension bridle rollers) to ensure the continuous and stable operation of the units and provide good performance in the cold rolling production line.
Next, it must upgrade the motors, drives, and other electrical equipment at the same time. It was also required to upgrade the entire cleaning section to eventually realize fully automated operation and avoid noise pollution;
Finally, since the tinnings lines of Baosteel were required to run around the clock, the time for equipment delivery, installation and commissioning must be kept as short as possible.
This created a great challenge for many vendors. Thanks to its compact REDEX Tension Multi Roll Leveler and experiences of successful applications at large steel mills abroad, the perfect evaluation scores on technology and business practices set REDEX apart from other outstanding vendors.
Being the First to REDEX Tension Multi Roll Leveler, its Applications Have Been Proven Worldwide.
The PMR 1300 used by REDEX on Baosteel’s tinning line production Tension Multi Roll Leveler jointly developed by ARCELOR PACKAGING International, IRSID, and REDEX, following the RDI development standards of CECA.
PMR 1300 Tension Multi Roll Leveler can apply force on both tensile and bending deformation of the strip at the same time to achieve precise elongation control.
Thus, all fibers in the strip are stretched to the same length to obtain excellent flatness of the strip and effectively eliminate the internal stress of steel strip.
