Case Study: Turbulent pickling line
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Contract Scope:
The turbulent pickling process is a cleaning process applied to hot steel strip after the rolling process, which removes scale from the surface and makes the steel suitable for galvanising, painting or other processing. The hot strip is pulled through acid baths and rinse baths, and then inspected, trimmed and rewound for onwards despatch.
During a short shutdown major mechanical works were undertaken by other contractors in parallel with the control system replacement by Boulting Group. As a result of careful planning and implementation the line was back in production on schedule.
The new pickling line increased throughput by 20%, improved the surface quality of the steel and reduced acid usage.
Complex control algorithms control the acid level and concentration in the cascade acid tanks, and line tension control ensures complete immersion of the strip at each process stage.
Services supplied
- Assistance in generating URS
- Comprehensive FDS
- Hazop input
- Overall control system design
- Cable-block diagrams & schedules
- PLC software configuration – 600 I/O
- Full SCADA configuration
- 100% software simulation testing
- Commissioning during short shutdown period
Equipment supplied
- Form 4 type 3 MCC
- All drives with power monitoring
- Profibus DP – integrated with the existing plant
- Siemens S7 PLCs, WinCC SCADA (3 nodes)
- Event logging/process trending.
