The new aluminum cold rolling mill (CRM) of North China Aluminum New Material Technology Co., Ltd. (NCA) was successfully commissioned at the end of February 2023. In only 18 months, the new scaffolded aluminum cold rolling mill for NCA at the Zhuozhou site was supplied and installed by SMS group. The future production capacity will be more than 80,000 tons per year.
NCA is one of the most important producers of aluminum foil in China. With the help of the new cold rolling mill, the company will be able to roll a wide range of soft to hard aluminum grades in widths from 1,000 to 1,800 millimeters. The strips can be rolled down to a final thickness of just 0.1 millimeters.
Technical details
The cold rolling mill supplied by SMS group is designed as a Sexto with CVC® plus technology (Continuous Variable Crown) and was delivered with all equipment for the entry and exit areas. The scope of supply thus includes decoiler and recoiler, all equipment for coil and spool transport as well as the fluid technology. The modern X-Pact® Level 2 system from SMS group ensures optimum adjustment of the roll gap, while the technological control systems ensure compliance with tight thickness and flatness tolerances. The final touch in terms of excellent flatness is provided by multi-zone cooling.
Another highlight is the inductive strip edge heating as the most efficient solution from SMS group to avoid tight strip edges, a well-known phenomenon in the cold rolling of aluminum. The induction technology ensures high-precision heating of the work rolls in the strip edge area and works far more energy-efficiently than other systems available on the market.
Safety in plant operation
The delivery of the cold rolling mill from SMS includes the latest generation of the X-Pact® electrical and automation system for aluminum rolling mills, which comprises operating and sequence controls as well as controls for additional components such as the rolling oil system, low-pressure and high-pressure hydraulic units. Convenient and safe plant operation as well as uniform operator guidance is made possible by the high-end visualization concept X-Pact® Vision HMI with integrated faceplate technology.
The SMS scope of supply also includes a Multi-Plate® plate filter, which is characterized by its modular design. The task of the plate filter is the highly efficient cleaning of the rolling oil used in the rolling process. The plate filter helps NCA to effectively counter rising energy costs, stricter regulations on emission reduction and increasingly scarce resources, including media and auxiliary materials.
"For NCA, we are implementing a cold rolling mill with state-of-the-art equipment that enables economical yet sustainable plant operation. One example of this is the inductive strip edge heating system. However, this project became a success especially due to the remarkable performance on the part of the entire team. As NCA is a new customer and personal contact with NCA representatives was almost impossible due to the restrictions caused by the Corona pandemic, we faced special challenges here. The short commissioning time is, of course, especially due to our colleagues on site, but also to all others who worked on this project," says Klaus Siegert, Design & Product Management Cold Rolling Mills Aluminium of the SMS group.
