Preheating effect on ladle lining performance in Tenaris Siderca

A. GIMENEZ; A. LAMBERTINI; J.M. BEIRANA; L. MUSANTE; L. MARTORELLO ; P. GALLIANO

Rosario

Congreso; 20º Steel Conference IAS 2014; 2014

Instituto Argentino de Siderurgia (IAS)

Thermal regime in steelmaking ladles is a critical issue that affects both secondary treatments and ladle lining performance. In this sense, preheating conditions plays a principal role. An unsuitable ladle preheating can result in low steel temperatures and thus stirring problems. Furthermore, unsuitable preheating conditions can promote wear mechanisms such as lining oxidation or spalling in the refractory bricks. It is well known that a drop in working lining mean life is usually expected when ladle time in preheaters is increased. In this work, lining performance results from different periods of low productivity in Tenaris Siderca are shown. Results includes operative data analysis, wear rate estimations, and in-plant temperature measurements with instrumented ladles. From this data, different actions were taken to reduce wear rates and their results are discussed. Finally, recent improvements in the preheating conditions of the ladles since the last annual reparation are shown, when a set of vertical preheaters were installed to partially replacea group of horizontal ones