Russula wins contract for the upgrade of the Gerdau Whitby reheat furnace
Russula is pleased to announce that it was selected by Gerdau Long Steel North America to upgrade the bar mill reheat furnace, located in Whitby, Ontario, Canada. The goal of the upgrade is to improve furnace safety and reliability by changing the current natural gas distribution, safety system and furnace control system.
The current system is a manual light up with no flame supervision. The control system is a combination of a Modicon Quantum PLC and Honeywell loop controllers. Russula will supply all the electrical equipment and control software necessary to bring the furnace up to international safety standards.
Level 1 Heating Control and Level 2 Furnace Optimization, including heating strategy tables and delay multipliers, will be implemented. The Level 2 Optimization efficiently manages the reheat furnace downtime, both planned and unplanned, permitting a significant reduction in gas consumption per ton of steel produced.
Russula is responsible for the installation supervision, commissioning and on-site operator/maintenance training. In addition, Russula will provide remote support for 6 months after the start-up to guarantee a smooth transition back to production.
On this project Russula is partnering with Bloom Engineering, Industrial Combustion and Control Specialists, to ensure the furnace equipment changes and automation comply with TSSA requirements. The Technical Standards and Safety Authority, located in Toronto, is dedicated to promote and enforce public safety for the Ontario government. Russula and Bloom Engineering will supply all the appropriate documents to pass TSSA review.
The engineering will be completed by the end of the year and the upgrade is scheduled during a planned shutdown in 2016. Most of the wiring and piping will becompleted prior to the shutdown. The installation of the new safety and control system will be completed during this outage. Commissioning is scheduled to begin towards the end of the outage.
