Aluminium ingot pre-heating

Preparing a direct-chill cast aluminium ingot for hot rolling is both time and energy consuming. It can require about 1.2 MJ of energy per kilogram of final product to perform the homogenisation and pre-heating operations. This compares with about 0.2 MJ/kg for the hot rolling process itself. Pit-ty...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAluminium international today Vol. 28; no. 3; p. 33
Main Author Darby, Andy
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Redhill Quartz Business Media Ltd 01.05.2016
Subjects
Aluminum
Direct chill casting
Energy consumption
Furnaces
Heat transfer
Heating
Homogenizing
Hot rolling
Ingot casting
Ingots
Process controls
Stores
Temperature
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Summary:Preparing a direct-chill cast aluminium ingot for hot rolling is both time and energy consuming. It can require about 1.2 MJ of energy per kilogram of final product to perform the homogenisation and pre-heating operations. This compares with about 0.2 MJ/kg for the hot rolling process itself. Pit-type furnaces for pre-heating are still in widespread use by rollers of aluminium flat products. Although they may not be the most efficient method of pre-heating, they do provide a flexible store of ingots to maximise availability of metal to the 'hot line' (rolling mills). This modelling approach can yield practical pointers to shortening ingot preheat times by enabling more aggressive heat-up schemes, without danger of overheating the ingot. It also indicates ways of reducing the energy losses of the process. Models are being used more and more as part of the process control and it is possible to envisage that in the near future these furnace models will be running online.
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ISSN:1475-455X