MWI Bureau

The flow of liquid steel from ladle to tundish is controlled by the use of a sliding gate valve. This valve consists of three refractory plates, two fixed and one free which can be moved horizontally by means of a hydraulic unit.

Thermal cycling is high for the slide gate system. The top nozzle suffers from thermal shock because cold well mix is added in every heat followed by the tapping of steel. The lower nozzle and slide gate plates suffer extremely from thermal shock

The country's factory growth has hit a two-year low in October because of the slow rise in new orders and output, dragging business confidence to its weakest since early 2017, according to a survey which indicates that more policy easing is likely. 


Innovative tundish technology involves: Higher tundish capacity. Steel heating technology for quality improvement on a mass scale. Hot turnaround of tundishes. Composition adjustments by additions (e.g alloy additions) in the tundish.

Ladle turret can be butterfly type with two lifting arms where individual lifting facility is provided for smooth operations. The lifting /lowering is done by standard hydraulic cylinder and load cell weighing facilities are provided to monitor the flow of the metal from the ladle to the tundish.

Tundish is an intermediate vessel that is intended to deliver the molten metal to the molds at a designed throughput rate and temperature without causing contamination leading to the formation of macro and micro inclusions. A tundish also acts as a reservoir during the ladle change over period and continues to supply steel melt to the mold. A tundish has the capability to reduce some fraction of macro and micro inclusions from the melt. The latest development in tundish operations has given steel makers the scope to adjust chemical compositions and melt temperature to an appropriate level for feeding into the mold.

Apart from rendering primary functions like containment of steel and preventing reoxidation, recent developments in ladle shroud technology have shown promises for fluid flow control and acting as slag carry-over detection device. The potentials of metal heating and additive feeding are some of the future scopes for developments which is still under exploration.

P K Rath, CMD,RINL-VSP inaugurated the ‘Twin Ladle Heating Furnace’ (TLHF) in Steel Melt Shop-2 on 30th Oct. The cost of building the project was around Rs.109 Crore in the existing Steel Melt Shop-2 area of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant. He congratulated the SMS-2 collective and agencies who were involved in the achievement and also said the commissioning of Twin LHF would enhance the production capabilities of RINL.

Ladle shroud can be considered a mathematical function of tundish metallurgy as far as the smooth tundish operation, steel production and quality is concerned. The primary function of the shroud is containment of teeming steel, preventing reoxidation by shielding the teeming stream from atmospheric contamination and preventing inclusions formation.

Turbulence inhibitor or commonly known as turbo-stop is a specially designed alumina base low cement castables. It is a pre-cast pre-fired(PCPF) refractory product which is placed over the impact plates or impact pads of the ladle stream. It homogeneously distributes the volume of steel flow to all the strands