Automation of secondary steel mill treatment

The Company

Tenaris Dalmine, Tenaris’s headquarters in Italy, is the first Italian producer of seamless steel tubes, with an annual production capacity of 950,000 tonnes of finished products, more than 3,000 employees and 5 factories in Italy.

The Needs

With the growing demand for steel in the manufacture of premium products, it was necessary to double the production capacity of the furnaces for refining steel, with the opportunity to make some technology upgrades on existing furnaces.

One of the focus of the project was to maintain absolute internal standards for the realization of the automation systems and the adoption of the latest technologies for the management of safety.

The strict downtime granted for systems startup was one of the most critical aspects.

The Solution

The automation of two LF refining furnaces (Ladle Furnace), a system for vacuum treatment (VD) and the related handling of loading of ferroalloys was designed using different PLC S7400 with safety functions (F), in this way it was possible to integrate in a single type of controllers aspects of process control with emergency and access to production areas management.

Control panels were implemented in virtualized way, using large operator panels on which control devices and signaling (pushbuttons, selector switches, lights, signals) have been configured.

Level 1 automation software is integrated with Level 2 software developed in close collaboration with the Technical Management of the customer.

Twenty years of experience in the steel industry and full compliance with the standards of the customer has allowed the development of activities and commissioning on schedule.

The Benefits

• Expansion of production capacity.
• Adoption of the new Tenaris Level 2 also in the treatment department
• No start-up delays after commissioning.
• Homogeneity of automation on different systems.
• Integration of automation functions and safety functions in a single solution.
• Communications between different machines via “safe”network connections.
• Management of access to production areas through simple procedures aimed to maximum security.