OREANDA-NEWS. April 25, 2012. This March, Baosteel Stainless has successfully overcome the process bottle neck of vacuum melting, with monthly melting output first over 20,000 ton, to 21,190 ton. The comprehensive hit rate reached the record high. The melting efficiency of high chrome super pure ferritic stainless steel is 100%, which has added precious experience for Baosteel to product more efficient, more stable and in larger scale, and also provide strong support for Baosteel Stainless to enhance its profitability, reported the press-centre of Baosteel.  

Vacuum melting is a high end process in stainless steel manufacturing procedure. Ultra low C-N stainless steel steel, ultra pure ferrite stainless steel, etc is demanding on N content, liquid steel purity and surface quality, and has to go through vacuum melting. In the designed product mix of Baosteel Stainless, such challenging variety is not engaged. Since this year, Baosteel Stainless expands its output of unique and leading product to cope with the changing market. The profitability of special grade steel is higher than conventional product, however,  there is great challenge in production management, operational control and equipment maintenance, especially demanding on the output of VOD melting. In the past, due to some process technical bottle neck, the monthly output of Baosteel Stainless VOD retains at about 10,000 ton.

Under the joint efforts of relevant department under Baosteel Stainless, our steel making plant has meticulously formulated the time table of special grade steel according to the feature of long process route, long melting period, to organize our production. Meanwhile, special research is made on the largest process bottle neck to restrain the production extension of special grade steel--VOD vacuum melting, and successively overcome such equipment challenges as long life of VOD small furnace cover, VOD vacuity enhancement.

Through sorting-out and optimization on special grade steel process, a bunch of bottle neck process to restrain output extension is overcome. In terms of operation & control, the steel making plant has not only improved operation proposal, but also brought out technician on-site tracking mechanism. In this March, steel making plant has not only created the record high over 20,000 ton monthly output, and the active demand of special grade steel in over 10 applications as  409L, 439, 444, etc has been effectively released, but the quality is also under control. The incidence of most popular quality defect of ultra pure ferrite stainless steel Mountain Scale slumps than the average level last year.