Section 5. STEEL AND FOUNDRY WASTES
PROCESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS INVOLVED IN
THE SELECTION OF HYDRAULIC AND LUBRICATION FLUIDS FOR A
MODERN HOT STRIP MILL
Conrad A. Perl, Staff Specialist
T. A. Hewitt, Engineer
D. L. Vice, Process Design Engineer
Water Technology Group
Stelco, Inc.
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada L8N 3T1
Henry K. Miyamoto, Project Manager
MacLaren Plansearch, Inc.
Toronto, Ontario
Canada MGR 1T7
INTRODUCTION
Lake Erie Works (Figure 1) is situated on 1660 hectares at Nanticoke, Ontario, on the north shore
of Lake Erie approximately 70 km south-west of Hamilton. It is an integrated steelmaking facility
with Dock and Raw material handling systems, a Coke Oven Battery, a Blast Furnace, two Basic
Oxygen Furnaces, a Slab Caster (BOSC) and a 2050 mm Hot Strip Mill. The rated plant capacity is
1.4 million tonnes/year. Industrial water is supplied by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment
(MOE) from Lake Erie. Water leaving the works is treated at the Blowdown Treatment Plant (BDTP)
and discharged to a holding pond (Pond #4) which overflows to Lake Erie.
The Lake Erie Works water systems were designed to minimize treatment costs and environmental
impacts [1]. For these reasons the following principles were adopted in the design process:
• recirculate process water;
• provide local treatment when required;
• use existing centralized blowdown treatment plant;
• use up-to-date technology.
BACKGROUND
The 2050 mm Hot Strip Mill (HSM) was designed with a 1600 1/s recirculated process water loop
that included the following local treatment (Figure 2):
• sedimentation (9.5 ml lagoon)
• filtration (8.5 l/m7s)
• evaporative cooling tower
The process water loop operates at about two cycles of concentration with a maximum blowdown
rate of 50 1/s.
After cascading the blowdown through the BOSC module, it is treated at the Blowdown Treatment Plant (Figure 3).
Water treatment steps at the Blowdown Treatment Plant include:
• reactor clarifier
• low rate filtration (3.4 l/m2/s)
The Hot Strip Mill's four rolling stands are supported by six hydraulic systems and seven lubrication systems.
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