Core Technology for Serving Our Country through Steel Making

A complete master plan is essential for transforming the wasteland into steel making infrastructure. The plan should include all the necessary elements ranging from location and feasibility study through to the master engineering plan, facility engineering plan, construction and commissioning plan and building completion. Based on our experience in building the Pohang and Gwangyang steelworks, we successfully completed the project/facility planning and master engineering review of the integrated steelworks of Vietnam and India, demonstrating our international excellence.

Setting a New Record with Innovative Technology

Blast furnace technology, which is called the symbol of steelworks and the sum of engineering technologies, is an advanced technology in which the blast furnace can be operated normally using only the organic systemization of design, construction, operation and maintenance. Completing the body of a blast furnace alone costs 250 to 300 billion won, and over 170 different technologies are required in the making of the furnace. The required level of technological expertise and experience requires a company to have operated for a considerable amount of time. Our technologies have meant that POSCO has completed blast furnaces in not only Pohang and Gwangyang but also countries such as and India. We are now extending our technology to the revamping and repairs of blast furnaces, which require revamping every 20 years.

Steel Revolution

Making hot metal, the basic material of steel products, requires the process of smelting coal and iron ore. As the existing process needed to use iron ore and coal in the form of a lump, it contained the process of sintering iron ore and baking coal (cokes). This process, however, requires enormous investment costs and also causes insoluble environmental problems. The FINEX system is an innovative next generation steel manufacturing facility that has resolved these problems. POSCO joined a technology development project led by POSCO and completed the world's first commercial FINEX system, and attained the normal production level in December 2007

Securing Another Future with Technology

The recently most preferred blister steel making method is the converter. Many steelworks around the world, including the POSCO steelworks in India and Vietnam, have continued to increase their investment in steel converters, which is indicative of the importance of steel converters to the steel manufacturing facilities. POSCO has developed the converter body form design technology used to calculate various forms of the body required for each material based on objective numerical analysis and empirical data.

Setting a New World Record with Innovative Technology

In 1957, Ruhrstahl AG, a steel maker, and Heraeus, a vacuum pump maker, collaborated to develop an RH system, which is typically used to enhance the quality of ingot steel by removing gas inclusions in ingot steel through refluxing gases in the vacuum vessel. It has also been widely used as a decarburization facility to meet the growing demand for ultra low carbon steel. However, the existing RH system had difficulties in securing production capability due to its long maintenance time. The RH system needed to be improved to more efficiently produce optimal products through secondary refining, and this led to the development of the Duplex-RH technology. We have secured world-class technology in the field of increasing production of strategic products by maximizing the production capability and efficiency of premium steel by applying the POSCO Duplex-RH technology to the location of the existing LF dust collector.

Penetrating the Mini Mill Market

In the Middle East and Asian regions, the overseas package type mini mill market has been rapidly growing in recent years. Entering the market in earnest requires the technology for the basic design of electric furnace and continuous casting facilities. POSCO has completed its unique continuous casting passline design simulator technology to minimize slab defects and maximize productivity. This technology enables us to verify the passline and review the production capability by steel grade by judging the possibility of the occurrence of internal and surface defects in products.

A New Casting Technology Recognized by the World

The strip casting technology is a new technology that reduces equipment investment costs, energy usage and hot rolling thickness by reducing the existing "5 steps of ingot steel → continuous casting (slab) → scarfing → slab heating → rolling" to "3 steps of ingot steel → strip casting → rolling".

POSCO and POSCO completed the commercialization technology of the strip casting that makes hot-rolled coils of 1.6-4mm in thickness directly from hot metal, and based on this technology, completed the construction of a demonstration plant (poStrip). Furthermore, we have secured the technology for the design, manufacture and construction of the demonstration plant by successfully completing the whole process from the basic design of the caster and auxiliary facilities of the plant to its installation on our own.

Opening the Future of High Efficiency Low Pollution Heating Furnace

The heating furnace facility that starts the process of hot rolling has been called the core of the hot rolling process. POSCO has come to the forefront in this area by completing the hot rolling heating furnace design technology that can improve work convenience and minimize operational pollution through heating furnace facilities. We have established a system that enables us to promptly respond to user needs by developing simulation software to secure the data required to perform heating furnace engineering.

Playing a Role in Building a Technology Korea

The hot rolling common facility design technology is an essential technology that can directly impact global competitiveness in the hot rolling process. A hot rolling facility consists of a plate accelerated cooling facility, cooling bed, down coiler and coil conveyor. The hot rolling common facility design technology is a technology that enables the optimization, weakness improvement by part, and maintenance technology advancement of each of these facilities. POSCO is leading the global market in the field of the installation and maintenance of facilities by securing a more competitive hot rolling facility relative to existing overseas technologies.

The First Attempt Leading to the Best

POSCO has succeeded in commercializing the automotive high tensile plated steel plate production facility, which is essential in lightening the auto body and reinforcing its safety. We have developed and applied our own design technology for a series of key facilities required in the process of producing high value steel: high-purity pre-processing facility → zinc pot → GA induction heater → skin pass mill and tension leveller. By optimizing the design of core facilities equipped with our exclusive special technologies, we have been able to take our high tensile plated steel plate production facility to a global level. Furthermore, we have made a significant breakthrough in the automotive plate market by securing the process design technology for automotive high tensile plated steel plates, which are among the high-end cold-rolled steel plate products.

Building New CCL by Improving Quality and Environment and Shortening Operation Preparation Time

The blast furnace technology, which is called the symbol of steelworks and the sum of engineering technologies, is an advanced technology in which the blast furnace can be operated normally only through organic systemization of design, construction, operation and maintenance. Completing the body of a blast furnace alone costs 250 to 300 billion won, and over 170 different technologies should back the making of the furnace, which is impossible without the technological expertise and experience built up over a long period of time. POSCO has completed blast furnaces in not only Pohang and Gwangyang but also countries such as and India. Now we are coming into spotlight once again by extending our technology area to the revamping and repairs of blast furnaces, which require revamping every 20 years.