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On the road to the
Steel Industry 4.0

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Innovation from Tradition

From industrial revolution up into the Internet age – steel has been making things possible and driving technologies forward. Dillinger has co-authored the history of progress since 1685. Our innovative methods, optimised processes and ever more productive facilities have continuously pushed back the limits of the feasible. We pursue our aim of giving our customers the biggest possible lead with our groundbreaking products and services. A major portion of the around 2,000 grades of steel which we supply have, for example, been developed within the past ten years. And we are adjusting our process chain to “Industry 4.0” technologies in ever more sectors, to enable Dillinger to supply better solutions for you even faster and even more flexibly in the future.

On the road to the Steel Industry 4.0

The more complex the production processes and the longer the value chains, the greater the benefits of comprehensive networking of people, machines and products. For this reason, the “things and services” Internet offers, for the steel industry, in particular, unique potentials for boosting productivity, quality, flexibility and efficiency. We at Dillinger recognised this fact at a very early stage and have already created numerous preconditions for the implementation of future-orientated technologies, ranging from logistics, via production and quality assurance, up to and including maintenance. We are pursuing the road to the Steel Industry 4.0 consistently because, at the head of this movement, we put ourselves and our customers in the best possible position for successfully countering further rising cost- and competition pressures.

Some recent examples

Innovative products

Dillinger heavy plate used in the world’s largest offshore heavy-lift cranes

High-strength heavy plate from Dillinger is indispensable wherever the format, strength and quality of the steels used are of existential importance. In Type MTC 78000 offshore heavy-lift cranes, for example, which are among the largest of their kind in the world, with a lift capability of 2,000 tonnes. Their use for some of the world’s largest heavy-lift vessels, such as the OSA Goliath, in the Gulf of Mexico, approaches the load-bearing limits of both machine and material. In addition to the out-of-the-ordinary range of properties, with yield strengths of up to 690 MPa, the unique thickness and dimensional diversity of our heavy plates gave the conclusive impulse in the decision to use these high-performance steels for the MTC 78000.

140 mm thick TM plates with national technical approval (NTA)

Our advances on the materials side have now been rewarded by national technical approval. Dillinger is the only producer capable of supplying thermomechanically (TM) rolled plates in Grade S355 M/ML in thicknesses up to 140 mm. These plates provide a double benefit: on the one hand, the NTA assures safety up to 140 mm tested in accordance with state building regulations while, on the other hand, the extra thickness provides designers with new creative potentials.

Environment & Energy

Use of waste-heat for Slab Pusher Furnace 3

The production of heavy plates is extremely energy-intensive. For this reason, we constantly pursue the aim of operating our processes and facilities as efficiently as possible. One example of this is the installation of evaporators in the slab pusher furnaces, by means of which an additional annual approx. 50,000 tonnes of steam are generated. This steam is sufficient, for example, to heat 2,000 private households. The steam is fed directly into our steam system to be used for heating of buildings, plant facilities and tanks. Steam generation in this way at the same time protects the environment, since it will, in future, no longer be necessary to generate this steam by combusting fuel. The sophisticated waste-heat utilisation system installed on Slab Pusher Furnace 3 is a showcase example of active environmental protection and of maximisation of energy-efficiency.

Environmentally friendly energy generation

Innovative steel products such as wind-power installations and modern power-generating plants save six times more CO2 than their manufacture causes. This is the conclusion of a study performed by the Boston Consulting Group. At Dillinger, we make an important contribution to environmentally friendly energy generation with, for example, the delivery of some 62,000 tonnes of steel for the Westermost Rough (North Sea) and EnBW Baltic 2 (Baltic Sea) offshore wind farms, which supply more than 150,000 British and 340,000 German households, respectively, with environmentally friendly electricity. This makes it possible to save more than one million tonnes of CO2 each year.

Heavy-plate research

Heavy-plate research

The focus of our heavy-plate research is on application-orientated research for special customer wishes which are not included in our standard delivery program. The aim of Dillinger’s researchers is to achieve the capability, by means of improved understanding of steel microstructures, and using computer-assisted models, of designing new property combinations – without time-consuming, cost-intensive operational tests. Our materials-science knowledge and modern aids, such as the scanning electron microscope (SEM), enable us to push back the limits of the possible even further.

Support for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of the Saarland University

Here at Dillinger, our aim is to constantly improve the already high quality of our heavy steel plate even further by means of joint research work. The foundations of offshore wind-power installations and oil drilling rigs around the globe provide excellent examples of applications in which high-performance steels from Dillinger are used. The heavy steel plates utilised in these structures must assure safe operation even after many years of exposure to extreme stresses. Innumerable small adjustments are necessary in the production of such special steels in order to meet the extremely high requirements set for these foundations. It is our intention to further optimise this complicated process jointly with the Saarland University.

333 years of Dillinger

Dillinger is one of Europe’s oldest companies. The challenges, the processes and the technologies have changed in the course of the centuries, but we nonetheless remain true today to our fundamental aims and values. We repeatedly set new milestones with reliability, quality and equitability:

1685
1804
1809
1828
1897
1961
1975
1976
1981
1984
1985
1991
1992
1998
2013
2016
2020
2023

French nobleman Charles Henri Gaspard de Lenoncourt of Lorraine receives permission from King Louis XIV to set up an ironworks, steelworks and smelting works in the Dillingen domain – the birth of Dillinger.

Dillinger is one of the first smelting works on the continent to put a plate rolling mill into operation, enabling it to produce large steel plates with a smooth surface and uniform thickness.

The company is given the legal form of a stock corporation, making it the oldest AG in Germany.

The ironworks creates the foundation for its company social policy and for the first time pays workers support in the event of illness or accident, and provides long-serving employees a monthly pension.

In Dillingen, the continent’s first electrically operated sheet-metal rolling mill starts operating.

The world’s first continuous casting line for slabs goes into operation in Dillingen and delivers slabs with a cross-section of 1,500 x 200 mm.

The company is recognized once again in a nationwide competition for its environmental protection measures at its steel plant site and for the care of the forest around the plant.

Dillinger produces thermomechanically rolled tubular sheet metal for the first time.

ROGESA is founded as the first step towards joint production of hot metal for all of Saarland’s steel mills, followed by the founding of the Zentralkokerei Saar coking plant the following year.

Dillinger is the first company in the world to produce longitudinally profiled plates – plates whose thickness varies continuously over their length – thus opening up new markets.

With the commissioning of a 5.5 m quarto high-stand line, plates can now be rolled with a finished width of up to 5,200 mm.

Dillinger, Usinor-Sacilor and Mannesmannröhren-Werke found the joint company Europipe for the production of large-diameter pipe.

The heavy plate rolling mill GTS Industries in Dunkirk, France, becomes a subsidiary of Dillinger and is renamed Dillinger France in 2014.

The world’s first continuous casting line with 400 mm slab thickness and soft reduction goes into operation in Dillingen, an investment of DM 200 million.

Steelwind Nordenham launches production. The plant, a subsidiary of Dillinger, specializes in the production of XXL monopiles and transition pieces for offshore wind turbines.

The new CC6 vertical continuous casting line – at over EUR 400 million, it’s the largest single investment at the Dillingen site – sets standards in all dimensions and sets a new record in 2017: At 600 mm, the world’s thickest slab is cast!

For the first time in Germany, hydrogen is used in Dillingen as a reducing agent in the blast furnace in regular operation.

Dillinger, Saarstahl and their joint subsidiary ROGESA are notified in December that funding has been approved for the historic Power4Steel transformation project.