Converteam Main Drive Powers Alunorf Rolling Mill

Berlin, 20 January 2010 – The KW 2 cold rolling mill of the world’s largest aluminum rolling mill and smelter, Alunorf GmbH located in Neuss, Germany, will be fitted with a new Converteam main drive. With two hot rolling mills and five cold rolling mills, Alunorf GmbH produces annually up to 1.5 million tons of high-quality rolled aluminum strip for packaging, printing, construction and transport applications. A dedicated smelter melts scrap and aluminum in different forms to ingots as feedstock for the rolling mills.

The KW 2 mill rolls aluminum coils, up to 1650mm wide and 6mm thick, in several passes to achieve a minimum final thickness of 0.2mm. The revamping of the rolling train drive featuring 25% increase in power and 25% increase in maximum speed enables the number of passes to be reduced and hence shorter cycle times to be achieved.

Up to now, the stand has been driven by two DC motors. Converteam will replace the motors, connected by a common shaft, with a single new 6.25-MW three-phase synchronous motor and a new medium-voltage converter from the MV7000 range. The drive train is designed for a short-time peak load of 10MW. Thanks to the new main drive, the maximum rolling speed can be increased from 1600 to 2000 meters per minute. Since the system now includes only one drive featuring higher total power, the revamping enables further maintenance costs reduction. The contract also includes erection and commissioning.
The KW 1, KW 2 and KW 3 cold rolling mills were already revamped in the past few years using Converteam automation and drive equipment.

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