Baosteel Meishan’s refurbished continuous caster 1 has passed hot commissioning four days ahead of schedule.

Low-carbon steel AP1360C1 was hot tested, with a casting speed of 1.2 metres per minute and strand cross section of 230mm in thickness and 1,070mm in width.

The caster was built in 1999 and its layout was unfavourable for the designed upgrade.

CISDI, the project’s package supplier, set up a tech breakthrough team to conduct offline integrated testing and BIM-based designs.

As a result, part of the existing civil foundations and equipment have been reused and solutions were found to enable rebuilding around site conditions complicated by the old caster’s process, layout, facility, utilities, pipeline and cable routing.

Multiple patented CISDI technologies and equipment were applied:

✔         Online thermal width adjustment system for the mould

✔         Second-generation hydraulic oscillation system

✔         3D dynamic secondary cooling and soft reduction model

The upgraded caster now produces ultra-low-carbon, fine blanking, pickling and high-strength structural steels.

Its projected production capacity is 1.90 million tonnes of qualified slabs a year.

The CCM1 takes Baosteel Meishan’s slab quality to top-ranking in China’s precision manufacturing sector