Direct Rolling And Hot Charging Of Strand Cast Billets

This volume is a collection of papers presented at the International Symposium held in Montreal August 1988 as part of the 27th Annual Conference of Metallurgists, co-sponsored by the Canadian Steel Industry Research Association, the Canadian Continuous Steel Casting Research Group and the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Four topic areas are covered in the presentations: (1) casting practice and billet quality for direct rolling and hot charging; (2) temperature equalization methods and equipment; (3) surface quality and sensors and (4) mechanical handling of billets for direct rolling and charging.

This international symposium is in honour of Professor\F\Weinberg who will be retiring from the University of British Columbia this year, following a distinguished career. Six sessions have been organized on Fundamentals of Solidification, Non-ferrous Casting Processes, Continuous and Static Casting of Cast Iron, Novel Solidification Studies and Semiconductor and Optoelectronic Crystal Growth, addressing the state-of-the art in each of these areas. Keynote speakers for the six sessions are: Dr\K\Jackson, Dr\N\Bryson, Prof\H\A\Frederiksson, Prof\I\Minkoff, Prof\M\C\Flemings and Prof\R\Brown.

The lead smelting industry has been experiencing increasing pressures on several fronts - pressure to reduce energy usage, to reduce overall cost of production, to improve environmental conditions associated with production, to improve recycling of waste lead products and to develop new markets and applications. These pressures have resulted in the development of new low cost, energy efficient processes achieving new standards of process emissions.

The Symposium covers most of the aspects of modern aqueous electrometallurgical practice, with a stronger emphasis on copper than zinc and nickel, which can be regarded as being the three major electrolytic metals. Of the minor electrolytic metals, there are contributions describing cobalt, lead and gold electrometallurgy, as well as the production of electrolytic manganese dioxide. The sessions divide neatly into modern copper tankhouse practice, purification techniques, modernization and automation, and new developments. A cross section of worldwide practice is represented, with a perhaps understandable concentration of Canadian operations. Plant tours to a modern zinc electrowinning operation, CEZ Inc at Valleyfield, and one of the world's largest copper refineries, Noranda Minerals, Inc., CCR Division in Montreal East, have been included as an integral part of the Symposium.

The Proceedings describe recent developments in the field of smelting, refining and fabrication of aluminum and magnesium in Canada and abroad.

A broad spectrum of the subject from basic research to plant applications has been covered. Flotation and hydrometallurgy have attracted a good deal of interest in view of their growing importance in the processing of complex ores. Physical methods including magnetic and gravity separation techniques have received attention in the processing of tantalum, niobium and tungsten. In addition, a set of papers is devoted to expert systems and their applications in mineral processing plants.