Application Status and Development Trend of Continuous Casting Reduction Technology: A Review

Continuous casting is a dominant steelmaking process due to its steady-state nature, enhanced yield of steel production, and low consumption of energy and manpower. However, the production of defect-free cast products is still a big challenge, as the internal defects, including macro-segregation of alloying elements, cracks, and pores, can be easily formed during the solidification process, which seriously deteriorates the microstructure and mechanical properties of the cast products. Therefore, this paper puts forward the common solutions to overcome these problematic issues. The reduction technology can effectively improve the center segregation of the billet, bloom, and slab. The history of the development of the reduction technology is summarized and classified according to the variations in research trend. Furthermore, the basic principles and parameters of reduction technology are described to implement them in the actual production process. This paper compares the similarities and differences between soft reduction (SR) and heavy reduction (HR) technologies with a particular focus on the theoretical research of HR technology and further elaborates the key parameter and equipment problems during implementation of HR. Moreover, this paper also considers the HR technology adopted by Baosteel as a case study, which helped to put forward some viewpoints for the future development of reduction technology.