Development of Process Technology for Making Electrode Quality Steel through Continuous Casting

Kumar Abhishek¹ , Rajib Khanda² , Somnath Kumar³ , Avinash Mishra⁴ , Sanjay Kumar Dhua⁵

Section:Research Paper, Product Type: Journal-Paper
Vol.6 , Issue.10 , pp.24-31, Oct-2020

Online published on Oct 31, 2020

Copyright © Kumar Abhishek, Rajib Khanda, Somnath Kumar, Avinash Mishra, Sanjay Kumar Dhua . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 

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Abstract :
The electrode welding non rimming grade (EWNR) is one such grade in which carbon (C), silicon (Si) and aluminium (Al) contents are very low. Electrode quality steel wire rods are used for making core wire for covered electrodes. Covered electrodes are used in manual metal arc welding (MMAW) of mild steel. There are two variants of electrode quality steel: electrode welding rimming (EWR), which are rimming steel and made through the twin hearth furnace (THF)-ingot casting route; and EWNR, which are de-oxidized steel and made through the basic oxygen furnace (BOF) - continuous casting route. Before the advent of continuous casting, the electrode quality steel was made through ingot casting throughout the world. Because of the obvious advantages offered by the BOF-continuous casting route over the THF-ingot casting route, steel plants across the world have shifted to the continuous casting process. Therefore, to fulfill the demand of electrode quality steel, steelmakers were left with no choice but to make this grade through continuous casting. However, unlike its predecessor, the continuous casting process suffers with the lacuna of inability to make rimming steel grades. The present paper lays down the challenges encountered in making the non-rimming variant of electrode quality steel through continuous casting, along with the methods devised to mitigate those challenges.

Key-Words / Index Term :
electrode quality, covered electrode, core wire, EWNR, de-oxidation, silicon reversal

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