A new continuous casting process

Continuous casting using water as coolant is state of the art, but still has some disadvantages. The fact that water is evaporating at low temperatures causes difficulties in process control and product quality. Furthermore the use of water as cooling material causes the danger of explosions. In order to prevent these disadvantages, we use liquid metal to cool the billet. Laboratory scale experiments have been done to investigate the possibility to cast an aluminium alloy, a magnesium alloy and copper using a low melting liquid metal as cooling material. Now a pilot scale plant has been constructed by Sommerhofer Technologies. After many tests with the pilot scale plant, results on the castability of aluminium and magnesium alloys are existing now. Advantages of the new process: larger process window for the coolant temperatures, constant high heat transfer coefficients, smooth surface, homogeneous grain structure, much lower crack risk, no danger of explosions; no contaminated cooling water; exchanged heat at usable temperature level.