The aim of the Heat­Steel pro­ject is to deve­lop an inno­va­ti­ve and ener­gy-effi­ci­ent anne­al­ing line for thin stain­less mar­ten­si­tic pre­cis­i­on strips. At the same time, in the cour­se of deve­lo­ping an ener­gy-effi­ci­ent line, the ext­ent to which pro­cess sta­bi­li­ty can be impro­ved in terms of pro­duct qua­li­ty is to be examined.

The pro­ject will deve­lop a new plant con­cept for the con­ti­nuous anne­al­ing of pre­cis­i­on strips. The heart of the plant will be the inno­va­ti­ve har­dening fur­nace inclu­ding coo­ling unit as well as the neces­sa­ry sen­sor tech­no­lo­gy and model-based con­trols for con­trol­ling the pro­cess para­me­ters. In addi­ti­on, AI-based pro­cess moni­to­ring and qua­li­ty opti­mi­sa­ti­on will take place.

Ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy is to be achie­ved through the fol­lo­wing strategies:

• New arran­ge­ment of ele­ments in order to use the was­te heat from the har­dening fur­nace spe­ci­fi­cal­ly for the har­dening pro­cess its­elf or for the tem­pe­ring process.
• Bet­ter insu­la­ti­on and thus reduc­tion of ener­gy losses.
• Increase in out­put and thus more effi­ci­ent use of raw materials.

The new line and the expec­ted savings are expec­ted to redu­ce car­bon dioxi­de emis­si­ons by 760 ton­nes in 2025. The con­s­truc­tion of a first pro­duc­tion line with test­ing as well as vali­da­ti­on of the plant con­cludes the project.

By par­ti­ci­pa­ting in this pro­ject, the IOB is expan­ding its com­pe­ten­ces in the area of pla­ne posi­ti­on simu­la­ti­ons as well as gene­ral pro­cess model­ling. Thus, a trans­fer of the model­ling approa­ches to strip pro­ces­sing lines for other mate­ri­als and steels in the area of hig­her through­puts will be pos­si­ble in the future. Fur­ther­mo­re, the under­stan­ding of con­trol-rele­vant mani­pu­la­ted varia­bles is increased so that future pro­cess models can also be used for con­trol optimisation.