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Metallurgy has always been a major industry in terms of industrial gas usage. The role of process gases has developed from their use as part of the combustion process to their use in atmosphere control and as part of chemical reactions. Air Liquide in Poland has been continuously developing new gas applications dedicated to the iron, steel and non-ferrous metallurgy with the same objective: increasing the competitiveness of its customers. Air Liquide can effectively contribute to improve the productivity of metal making processes and the quality of the products, and to reduce the production costs.

Steel is still one of the most important materials on the market, particularly in construction, the automobile industry and packaging. Also non-ferrous metals (copper, zinc, nickel, lead) have wide range usage in old and modern industry (in telecommunications, IT applications). Gas consumption, particularly oxygen in these two sectors is increasing for environmental and technical reasons.

The main gas applications are:

• oxygen: in blast furnaces, shaft furnaces, oxygen converters, vacuum degassing process,
• nitrogen: in blast furnaces, oxygen converters, ladle furnaces, continues casting,
• argon: in oxygen converters, ladle furnaces, vacuum degassing process, continues casting,
• carbon dioxide: in oxygen converters, continues casting,
• hydrogen/carbon monoxide: in metal heat-treatment.

Metallurgical industry is consuming large quantities of gases for its processes. For this reason the main Air Liquide activity in this industry is continuous supply of gases from installations erected on the customer's site - designed and tailored to fulfil all requirements.

Oxygen, the main gas used in metal smelting, is mostly applied in furnace firing systems as a smelting intensification factor.
The main advantages resulting from oxy-fuel combustion are:

• increasing furnace capacity / higher productivity of the whole production line,
• decrease fuel consumption / lower melting costs,
• decrease emissions / lower environmental costs,
• no need for recuperator or regenerator / cheaper installation, no maintenance cost,
• reduction of fumes volume / cheaper installation, lower filtration costs.

Please find below Air Liquide's solutions for metal smelting: 

For hot rolling mills, Air Liquide offers ALROLL™ technology consisting in oxy-boosting of reheating furnaces firing system. ALROLL™ technology allows for furnace capacity increase, gas consumption decrease, better temperature homogeneity inside the product and decrease in specific pollutant emission.

For heat treatment, Air Liquide offers a complex range of ALNAT™ solutions. ALNAT™ atmosphere types (neutral or active) and their exact compositions are adapted to each particular heat treatment processes, such as:

• annealing and tempering,
• carburising and decarbonising,
• nitriding and cyaniding,
• neutral and fast hardening,
• sintering and brazing.

ALNAT™ offer include also solutions for atmospheres production and control as well as related services such as audit of furnace and applied atmospheres, control analysis, staff training, monitoring and reporting.

Air Liquide offer include also global solutions for the following processes:

• liquid metals refining and stirring (secondary metallurgy),
• casting under protective atmosphere,
• aluminium profiles extrusion under inert atmosphere,
• ladle preheating with oxy-fuel burners,
• sand cores and moulds curing (carbon dioxide, nitrogen),
• moulds coating with acetylene soot,
• dross cooling under inert atmosphere (argon, nitrogen),
• maintenance works: dry ice cleaning of moulds and technical equipment, welding and cutting,
• tightness checking of cast parts with nitrogen / helium mixture.

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