Hot strip for Siemens

has been awarded the contract to supply the main drives and associated control technology for a new hot strip mill for the Anshan Iron & Steel Group (

) in China. The contract is worth around €22 million. The drive equipment will be delivered, installed and commissioned in early 2007.

Angang is one of the largest iron and steel producers in China. The company operates a production complex with an annual capacity of ten million metric tons of pig iron and raw steel in the city of Anshan in Liaoning province.

The client portfolio for Angang's products includes the automotive and shipbuilding industries. They also supply structural steel, railroad rails and metal sheet for the manufacture of household goods. As part of a capacity expansion project, Angang is building an additional hot-rolling mill for a maximum strip width of 1430mm.

Siemens is to supply the main drives for the two roughing stands and the seven-stand finishing mill. The cylindrical-rotor synchronous motors, with a total output of 81 megawatts, are powered via Simovert D cycloconverters.

Siemens says air-cooled cycloconverters require fewer power components and less mounting space for the same output power than other drive types and that Angang is already using cycloconverter technology to operate a large number of drives in its hot and cold rolling mills.

The motors are manufactured by Siemens Dynamowerk

. The edging mill stands and the three downcoilers are driven by synchronous motors operating with Simovert Masterdrive low-voltage converters. The project also includes supervision of installation and commissioning of the drives.