New Pusher Type Furnace for ALUMINIUM KONIN - IMPEXMETAL S.A. (Poland)

20 April 2005

ALUMINIUM KONIN - IMPEXMETAL S.A. (Poland) has awarded Gautschi for a turnkey delivery of a Pusher Type Furnace for preheating and homogenising of Aluminum slabs in their plant at Konin. The 4 zone furnace with one recirculation fan per zone is direct gas fired with recuperative burners. The maximum charge weight is 240 metric tons.

The inner casing is especially optimized for customers product range and includes a nozzle system, which creates an efficient heat transfer and thus reasonably short heat-up times.

The handling equipment at the entry side consists of two roller tables, where the slabs will be layed down by the shop crane. From there a full automatic processing takes place, using a pusher device, an up-ender turning the slabs into vertical position and putting them onto sliding shoes. At the exit side the slabs will be directly handed over onto the roller table of the hot mill by an extracting device and an down-ender. Two cross transports and one return transport circulate the sliding shoes from exit side to entry side of the furnace. The shoes comprise new designed sliding plates with lowest friction values and long operation life.

One operator panel at each end of the furnace are foreseen for the process control. Each panel comprises a SCADA system, which gives the operators in different visualizations all needed information about handling control, alarms, historical data, slab temperature or the current heat treatment program of the furnace.