Nucor Steel Marion Inc., recently awarded SMS group with a purchase order for a walking beam furnace as part of the USD 85M investment that the company is making to upgrade its bar mill in Marion, Ohio. The new reheating furnace represents the first and most important step of the broader modernization project, which will take approximately 18 months to complete. Nucor Steel Marion will be able to achieve improved temperature uniformity and, therefore, better rolling quality of the billets out of the new furnace.
The SMS group supply comprises a walking beam reheating furnace rated at 120 short tons (or 109 metric tons) of billets per hour, and includes loading and unloading billet handling equipment as well as ancillary services such as electric & automation and a dedicated water treatment plant.
The new furnace will be split into several combustion zones, controlled independently and responding to the sophisticated and renowned SMSPrometheus software for heating optimization and digitally controlled extra low NOx burners.
