Nippon Steel Corporation

Mitsubishi Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Kensuke Shimomura

Tomoaki Tanaka

Mayumi Okimori

Gaku Ogawa

Takashi Arai

Hiroshi Iwasaki

Yoshimori Fukuda

Hironori Takano

Hiroaki Morishige

Kenji Abe

Tadashi Imoto

Hiroyuki Nakajima

Yasuhiro Yamagami

Masaru Sadachika

Nobuyuki Makino

Hidetake Oka

A vacuum/reduced pressure refining vessel (,) is connected, by an upstream duct (,) to a dry dust collector (,) that uses a filter (,). The dry dust collector (,) is connected to a reduced pressure evacuating apparatus (,) by a downstream duct (,), and a block valve (,) is provided in the upstream duct (,). At the start of a vacuum/reduced pressure refining treatment, a non-oxidizing gas is injected into the upstream duct at a position that is upstream of the block valve (,) to substantially replace the oxygen in the upstream duct and to hermetically close the upstream duct. After the hermetically closed state has been established in the upstream duct, the block valve (,) is opened and operation of the dry dust collector (,) is started. At the end of the vacuum/reduced pressure refining treatment, the block valve (,) is closed and only the non-oxidizing gas is injected into the upstream duct to return the pressure, and then the upstream duct is opened to atmospheric air, and preferably an open port on the side of the dry dust collector (,) is closed during a waiting period from the end of the vacuum/reduced pressure refining treatment until the start of the next vacuum/reduced pressure refining treatment.

Method for vacuum/reduced-pressure refining and facility for vacuum/reduced-pressure refining

Vacuum refining furnace

Process for producing thin metallic strip by continuous casting

A method of continuously casting a thin strip by pressing a pair of side walls to both side surfaces of a pair of rotating cooling drums to form a metal bath and rotating said cooling drums so as to cool a molten metal inside the metal bath and to continuously cast the thin strip, comprising the steps of pressing the side walls, which are pre-heated before the start of casting of the thin strip, to the end surface of the rotating cooling drums at a predetermined surface pressure so as to apply deformation corresponding to the shape of the end surfaces of the cooling drums to the side walls, casting under lowered press surface pressure conditions to form a necessary sliding surface required for stable casting, moving the side walls to the positions at which a wear quantity of the sliding surfaces of the side walls reach a target value, and continue casting while maintaining said positions.

Continuous casting method of thin strip

Growing community of inventors

Hikari, Japan

Kensuke Shimomura