Zhenjiang Lonsen Steel Strip Co., Ltd., P.R. China, recently placed an order with furnace builder Ebner Industrieofenbau, Austria, for a Hicon/H2^® bell annealer facility. The new bell annealer will be installed at a new rolling mill near Hangzhou in the Zhejiang Province.

The complete order is comprised of 15 Hicon/H2 workbases, 8 gas-fired heating bells, and 8 cooling bells, plus supplementary equipment. It also includes 4 stands for final cooling. The annealers will be installed in a new cold rolling mill and used to bright-recrystallize cold-rolled steels in straight hydrogen atmosphere. The total annual throughput amounts to around 300,000 tonnes.

Coils to be heat-treated will have a maximum outer diameter of 2100 mm and a maximum weight of 28 tonnes. The maximum charge stacking height is 5.6 meters.

Key components such as the latest-generation encapsulated Hicon/H2 workbase, cooling bell blowers and the entire PLC/COS control system, will be supplied from Ebner’s company headquarters in Austria. The Chinese local supply share, including gas-engineering components and low-voltage control system, will be supplied by Ebner’s subsidiary Ebner Industrial Furnaces (Taicang) Co., Ltd., located about 200 km away from the customer's works.

Commissioning of the facility is scheduled for December 2005.