Materials Analyst March 06: Arcelor

Arcelor is a leading force in the transformation of the global steel industry. With a turnover of 30 billion euros and shipments of 43.9 million tonnes of steel in 2004, the company is a major player in all its main markets: automotive, construction, household appliances and packaging as well as general industry. Arcelor employed 94000 employees at the end of 2004 in over 60 countries. For more information, visit www.arcelor.com

Thermo is proud to present below the testimonial of Mr. Jean-Claude Lopez, Engineer, Head of the Analysis and Testing Laboratory of Arcelor Atlantique et Lorraine, Dunkirk Site in France:

“Today, at Arcelor Dunkirk, a steelworks modernisation programme has been launched with the objective of progressively increasing its capacity from 6.7 million tonnes to 7.2 million tonnes by 2010. This is of course going to require a much greater number of analyses in the analytical control laboratory working round the clock (7 days a week and 24 hours a day). The programme is a heavy one: 250,000 analyses per year or around 700 per day.

It was therefore necessary to invest to achieve three objectives: to increase the laboratory’s capacity, reduce delays in analysis and improve measuring uncertainties.

It is all the more necessary to increase precision and reliability of analysis as car body makers’ requirements grow. A big reduction in delays, a strong growth of the percentage of vacuum-degassed metal, a growth in the demand for very low carbon metal presuppose fast, reliable analyses.

Three phases of investment are planned as part of the programme.

The first phase was concluded at the end of September 2005 with the replacement of the first automatic steel measuring line. The choice fell on an automatic line including ARL 4460, SMS-2000 with a vision system linked to a Herzog preparation machine.

Several reasons led to this choice:

• The convincing results from the equipment assessment tests
• The “standardized” design is robust
• The modular aspect is relevant
• The benchmark tests confirm our investigations and the direction in which we intended
• Thermo is well-known in the area of spectrometers and fully automated systems, in particular in the world of iron and steel making
• The efficient relationship developed with our laboratory over several years

The automatic line has been in operation since September 2005 and we haven’t encountered any major problems. The first awaited results in production have been spot on, both in terms of accuracy and technological reliability.

Phase 2, installation of the second steel automatic line from Thermo, is now under way. It is scheduled for September 2006.

J.-C. Lopez
Head of Laboratories
Arcelor Dunkirk”

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