Heat treatment of very heavy large-diameter pipes

TMK’s Seversky Pipe Plant has awarded SMS group (www.sms-group.com) the Final Acceptance Certificate for a heat treatment line for tubes and pipes at its Polevskoy site in Russia’s Sverdlov region. The line is one of the world’s most productive facilities with an annual capacity of up to 300,000 tons of pipes with diameters between 168 and 370 millimeters, a wall thickness of up to40 millimeters and lengths of up to 13.5 meters.

The line is able to process small batch sizes and different product groups in a highly cost-efficient manner. Seversky Pipe Plant now has a fully automated quenching and tempering heat treatment line satisfying all preconditions in terms of production and final material quality and allows TMK to offer fully finished high-quality pipes for the oil and gas industry. TMK awarded SMS group the certificate following successful hot, cold and performance tests. “Thanks to the quality of the equipment supplied by SMS group and the strong cooperation between TMK and SMS team specialists remotely and on-site, we were able to successfully commission the line in time despite the limitations related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said V. A. Toporov, Technical Director of Seversky Pipe Plant.

The scope of supply included the entire treatment line. Its core is made up of the SMS Quenching Head which features an innovative patented inner quenching lance for tube wall thicknesses of more than 25 millimeters and is an outstanding product of SMS group’s research and development department. The new design of the SMS inner lance, coupled with the SMS Quenching Head, maximizes heat transfer and thus facilitates the successful treatment of very heavy tubes, previously difficult or impossible to process through water tank systems or using earlier versions of internal lances. Moreover, the new trolley-mounted design greatly increases the process speed, boosting production efficiency by about 40 percent compared to the traditional inner cooling systems. In addition, SMS group supplied the complete water treatment system, automation and electrical systems for the entire heat treatment line.

The new heat treatment line from SMS group consolidates TMK as the largest manufacturer and exporter of steel pipes to over 80 countries worldwide. TMK maintains significant steel pipe production capacity in Russia, Romania and Kazakhstan. Its largest share of sales is dedicated to oil country tubular goods (OCTG).

Source and photo: SMS group