Sollac Lorraine has two LWS bottom blowing converters. This process generates rapid skull formation on the upper part of the vessel preventing normal operation. A post-combustion lance has been installed in order to get rid of skull formation and increase the scrap ratio charged into the converter. The industrial start up, in April 2000, has shown a very good performance for skull control and also for the increase of scrap charged into the vessel.

In order to reduce operation costs and to increase liquid steel production capacity, a team "Ugine-Ardoise" and "UCAR Technical Assistance" has redimensioned new transformers for the electric arc furnaces and has pushed the installation to its maximum limits while maintaining the existing power input voltage infrastructure. The new transformers reactance has been considerably increased in order to allow operation with "high power factors" (long arcs). This modification has been done thanks to the fast investment returns, resulting from considerable gains in productivity, electrode consumption and energy consumption. The installation is not yet utilized at its full power, but after some additional transformations (electrode circle diameter reduction on furnace No.2 and modification of electrode arms and electrode holding grips on the two furnaces), one more heat could be realized per day.

The new casting-rolling plant of Thyssen Krupp Stahl AG is in operation since April 1999. Differences in comparison with other CSP plants are described. The production results at this time are explained together with the range of steel grades and the achieved dimensions. Differences with respect to conventional hot rolled strip are shown in surface quality as well as in mechanical properties and in dimensional tolerances.

Using an IF-steel, the application of ferritic rolling in the thin slab direct rolling technology has been studied with the objective of producing thin hot rolled strip with good deep-drawing properties. The effect of the main processing parameters has been simulated in the case of the production of two types of finished products: "soft" hot strip (completely recrystallized during coiling), "hard" strip (obtained with low finishing and coiling temperatures and subsequently annealed).

As leader of a consortium, VOEST-ALPINE Industrieanlagenbau (VAI) has supplied the hot strip mill complex of HADEED (nominal capacity of 800,000 t/y) on the turn-key basis. This complex delivers a wide range of products. The installations are characterized by a series of innovative solutions in the areas of mechanical technologies and automation. Already during the start-up trials, the operational performances have partly been well above the values specified in the contract.

This paper describes innovative solutions developed by VOEST-ALPINE Industrieanlagenbau (VAI) for bar and wire-rod mills and concerning mechanical equipment as well as automation systems. Among them, the Precision Rolling System (PRS) was first implemented at Chaparral Steel (USA) and the Minimum Tension Control is applied at BMZ (Belarus). Benefits are: improved product quality, greater mill availability, increased flexibility and productivity.

Ferritic warm rolling associated with cold rolling and annealing should be a promising and cost effective route for the production of DQ and DDQ qualities of thin strip. In the case of non-recrystallization warm rolling, warm and cold rolling contribute both to the development of the work-hardened structure and of the texture before annealing. Laboratory simulations have tried to determine how flexible this processing route could be. For a given total ferritic reduction, the cold rolling texture and the recrystallized grain size depend on the fraction of this reduction which is made by warm rolling. The final texture and the mechanical properties are however relatively insensitive to this fraction.

The impact of the ferritic rolling schedule on oxide scale formation and on pickling rate has been compared to its austenitic counterparts. The effect of thin hot strip development on pickling plant productivity and on pickling cost price was also analysed. Different potential improvements to increase pickling rates were investigated and economical solutions are proposed.

Linked with the modernization of the steelmaking plants and the hot rolling mills at Chiba Works, the No.1 continuous pickling line was constructed, as a replacement of two old pickling lines and started its operation in January 1994. For efficient processing of material strips, which are getting increasingly thinner on market demand, the pickling line was equipped with a newly developed high speed pickling method, using a box dam-spray descaling, and various automated facilities, realizing the highest line speed in the world.