The HPH (High Performance Hydrogen) bell-type furnaces also works with hydrogen as annealing atmosphere and has per base an usable diameter of 4,200 mm and a charging height of 3,500 mm. Thus, an average batch weight of 28 t steel wire per annealing base can be achieved. Not only hot rolled wire coils but also drawn wire coils shall be annealed. The start of production for the new annealing plant is late fall of 2017.
With this order, LOI, a company of the Tenova Group, could prevail against national and local competitors in a difficult market environment in China. The client, the company STM Kunshan Cheng Tongming Metal Co. Ltd. from Kunshan City in the province Jiangsu, already operates a bell-type furnace plant which was, however, supplied by a competitor of Tenova LOI. With this new customer acquisition, Tenova LOI could emphasize its superior position in bell-type annealing of wire coils by means of its HPH technology.
At the end of 2016, LOI already received the third contract by the Norm Group located in Izmir, Turkey, after orders in 2012 and 2014. This latest order will consist of three annealing bases, two heating hoods and one Jet-cooling hood and will go into production at the Somun plant of the Norm Group in October 2017. Besides the spheroidization annealing of wire rod, this plant also carries out recrystallization annealing of drawn wire coils with the HPH (High Performance Hydrogen) annealing technology. The Norm Group is a leading manufacturer of fasteners in Turkey and requires for its continuous growth the most modern HPH annealing technology from Tenova LOI in Germany.
Already in December 2012, the Norm Group ordered for their Civata plant the first Tenova LOI HPH bell-type annealing plant for wire coils. In the beginning, this plant consisted of two annealing bases, one heating hood and one Jet-cooling hood and is until today extremely successful for spheroidization annealing of wire rod. In the summer of 2014, a contract was signed concerning the expansion of the existing plant by further annealing base and an additional heating hood from the German technology partner. Since the summer of 2015, the bell-type annealing plant which consists in the meantime of three annealing bases, two heating hoods and one one Jet-cooling hood, anneals 32.000 t of wire rod coils per year. Because of the follow-up contract for the plant for Somun, an additional increase to 64.000 t/a is upcoming.
_{(Source: LOI Thermprocess GmbH)}