Have a look at the table of contents. Our industry’s commitment to decarbonisation has gathered momentum. Political initiatives such as the European Green Deal have supported this momentum as well as an increased awareness of the entire iron and steel sector. Roberto Pancaldi, CEO of Tenova, says that investments have only been delayed this year, but never stopped – disproving the worst predictions we made at the outbreak of the pandemic – while the interest in green technologies has grown even stronger. Read more about his point of view and Tenova’s hydrogen activities in his editorial.

Interview

“We’ve been supplying products for hydrogen applications since the 1990s”
Dr. Michael Severin is Business Field Manager Process Heat at Karl Dungs GmbH & Co. KG. In this interview with heat processing he speaks about the significance of hydrogen, changing customer requirements as well as the growth potential in this field.
Read the interview

Reports

Furnace model predictive control forecasts transitions to enhance strip quality and productivity
Annealing furnaces today are mostly regulated by proportional integral derivative (PID) controllers or with the help of static-based models. Those methods, though applicable, are providing non-optimal control during transitions due to their limited ability in forecasting the furnace behaviour. Fives has built, with its Furnace Level 2 solution named Virtuo^®, comprehensive dynamic models of annealing furnaces and used them in model predictive control (MPC). This paper shows how MPC helps reacting in advance of a process change and provides better strip quality as well as enhanced plant productivity.
Intelligent heat treatment atmosphere optimisation and cloud-based advisor services
While closed loop atmosphere control in carburising is state of the art, nitrogen-based atmospheres for carbon steel annealing, hardening and sintering furnaces are commonly operated with fixed flow rate settings. Without proper atmosphere control, these processes suffer from the risks of decarburisation or surface oxidation. The emerging trends in Industry 4.0, e.g. smart sensors, real-time process monitoring, and data analytics, have allowed the development of an intelligent annealing furnace atmosphere advisor system for operating these heat treating processes in the desired thermodynamic condition.
Precise temperature measurement in gas-fired kilns for billet heating
Heating of billets, which are used for the treatment in the subsequent extruder, is done in inductively heated and gas-fired kilns. For ensuring the specified extrusion temperature, heating passes through several zones according to a temperature profile. Thus, it is necessary to monitor the temperature of the billets in each heating zone. The article describes the procedure and the particularities of the measurement as well as the selection criteria of the pyrometers for precise temperature measurement in gas-fired kilns.
Modular heat treatment using nitriding and low-pressure carburising (part 2)
Vacuum heat treatment has become increasingly important in recent decades. In addition, low-pressure carburising (LPC) has been an alternative to the conventional carburising processes for more than 30 years. Its use, which was slowed down for a long time by technical and economic problems, has been further established in series production over the last 15 to 20 years. New considerations and applications now also bring together the nitriding and nitrocarburising processes with modular vacuum hardening technology. The three-part article represents the basic considerations of process and plant engineering in connection with the economic and environmental factors. Part 1 presented the plant technology (issue 3/2020). Part 2 now explains the basics of the heat treatment processes under consideration.

You can also read all reports as separate e-papers. Therefore, please visit our shop. Read the whole issue as e-Paper Do you already know our monthly heat processing newsletter? Once a month, we provide you with the latest news of our industry and also give you an exclusive insight into our magazine. Don’t miss this opportunity & subscribe here.