15/01/2024 – Sustainably produced steel for the US energy sector
Nucor Steel Brandenburg celebrates inauguration of new facility
Nucor Steel Brandenburg has celebrated the inauguration of the new greenfield facility at the Buttermilk Falls Industrial Park site located on the Ohio River in Brandenburg, Kentucky.
From left to right: Al Behr, Executive Vice President; Steve Meredith (R), U.S. Senator District 5; David Sumoski, COO Nucor Corporation; Johnny Jacobs, Vice President and GM (Construction); Andy Bashear (D), Governor Commonwealth of Kentucky; Chris Rice, Vice President and General Manager Brandenburg. © SMS Group
The core unit of the works is the single-strand continuous caster supplied by SMS for ultra-wide and ultra-thick slabs. It is one of the world’s largest and most advanced continuous casting plants, which is capable of producing 1.45 million t of slabs per year in widths of up to 3.15m and thicknesses of 200mm, 250mm and 300mm. With this new plant, Nucor plans to supply steel products, sustainably manufactured, for renewable energy projects. One of the most important products manufactured at this facility is Nucor's “Elcyon”, a heavy plate product made from recycled materials, which was specially developed for the offshore wind industry and provides a domestic sustainable steel supply chain that is in great demand by the US energy sector.
SMS supplied the following key equipment for this facility: A single-strand continuous caster for ultra-wide and ultra-thick slabs, walking beam and bogie hearth furnaces, a continuous heat treatment line and heavy-plate treatment section, as well as the water treatment system. The SMS group reheating furnace was equipped with the particularly low-NOx, flameless and versatile “Zero Flame” burners, the stage 1 automation system, “X-Pact Digi Mod Control”, and the stage 2 heating optimisation system, “X-Pact Prometheus”. “X-Pact Digi Mod Control” combines the modulating control of the burner control zones with the digital control of each burner, in order to ensure the correct flame pattern and thermal profile of the furnace in all operating conditions. The “X-Pact Prometheus” system enables the desired temperature profile and uniformity to be achieved for any material and steel grade, with minimum fuel consumption, decarburisation and scale loss.
As a lifecycle partner, SMS has set up a repair service centre at the Nucor Brandenburg site and offers repair services for continuous casting molds and containment segments as part of a long-term service agreement. In addition to the “HD LASr” used for caster equipment alignment in the workshop, an “HD scan” unit is also installed in the Brandenburg service centre, which SMS can use to analyse the internal microstructure and quality of the slabs for the continuous caster in Brandenburg and for other customers. SMS group has built up a strong team of 22 employees who are able to provide mechanical and electrical maintenance services for all areas of the Brandenburg plant for many years to come.
“This represents another chapter in the long history of Nucor and SMS group, which have been collaborating closely for more than 35 years,” says Chad Donovan, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for SMS group; Key Account Manager for Nucor.
