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Although the first patent for Tata Steel was filed in 1947, with IPR becoming strategically significant, a major step in establishing a sound intellectual property mechanism was taken in 2001 with the creation of a patent cell giving focus and fillip to the intellectual property movement in Tata Steel. The result was almost immediately visible. The initiatives taken over the years have helped the Tata Steel Group increase its total IP portfolio (filed and granted patents and copyrights) from 32 in FY 2000 to 493 till date. Out of these 133 patents have been granted, the remaining 360 have been filed and are at different stages in the process of being granted.

 

The Tata Steel Group IPR portfolio also comprises around 250 pending trademark applications and over 1500 registered trademarks for premium products such as Shaktee® for Tata galvanised corrugated steel, MagiZinc® for a newly developed corrosion resistant Al-Mg-Zn coated steel and Colorcoat® for a range of pre-finished steel products for the building envelope.

 

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Tata steel’s Research and Development activities will continue to focus on identified thrust areas that include:

 

Economic Mineral Beneficiation:

Research in this area is aimed at identifying ways to maximise use of raw materials from captive sources and is focused on three areas:

 

8% Ash Coal maintaining yield :

The objective is to develop a cost-effective beneficiation route for producing clean coal with 8% ash, maintaining current yield from the captive collieries. To achieve this, work is being carried out in three main modules like coarse coal beneficiation (2mm and above, to produce 12% ash clean coal), fine coal beneficiation (between 0.25 mm to 2 mm to produce 10% ash clean coal) and beneficiation of middlings, tailings and rejects. The processes will be done with the help of completely new technology being developed by the company. Tata Steel, for this purpose is working in close collaboration with IIT Kharagpur, Tata Research Design and Development Centre -Pune, University of Queensland- Australia, ISM -Dhanbad and others.

 

Complete beneficiation of Iron Ore:

Process for complete beneficiation of iron ore is under way and a pilot plant is in progress in Jamshedpur. Technologies are being developed and up-scaled to beneficiate high-alumina fractions and slimes with the aim to reduce alumina content to less than 1.5%. Efforts are also being made to commercially utilise the rejects.

 

Technology for cost-effective use of newly acquired raw material sources:

A direct reduction method was developed for zinc bearing iron ore that ensures that zinc is retained in the DRI to avoid problems associated with vaporisation of the metal. The DRI thus produced can be processed in electric arc furnaces, a well-established route for steel production from scrap with high zinc content. A feasibility study was successfully carried out.

 

Improvement in Raw Material Quality:

Raw material costs play a key role in the competitiveness of the steel industry. Various R&D programmes are underway to address the issue of escalating raw material prices. Research iniyiatives seeks to maximise the use of raw materials from captive sources. These projects include new technology to produce low ash clean coal and beneficiation of low grade iron ore and plant rejects to produce concentrates.

 

Research and development has brought improvement in the steel making process by lowering phosphorous in steel making.

 

• Themes addressed are: Design of a new supersonic lance, improvement in bottom stirring and assessment of the BOF slag system.
• Trials have been carried out at the LD2 steel plant in Jamshedpur with a new 6+1 hole top lance designed by R&D.
• Implementation of a new way of blowing argon from the vessel bottom called ‘Differential Flow’ at the LD2 plant in Jamshedpur has improved the phosphorus partition and reduced the argon consumption.
• New coal agglomeration technology to increase the use of low-cost non-coking coal for coke production

 

Improvement in Facilities

R&D’s commitment towards continuous improvement and its development of cutting edge technology has supported Tata Steel to become one of the lowest cost steel producers worldwide. The many activities in this field include research on agglomerates chemistry, blast furnace burden distribution, integrated through-process modelling, reduction in zinc consumption during tube galvanising and many more.Tata Steel’s R&D centers also conduct many programmes to improve the life cycle and sustainability of the Company’s products that include projects to reduce energy consumption, CO2 and other emissions.

 

Improving the Blast Furnace Productivity :

Experiments to study the effect of burden distribution, shape of cohesive zone, layer thickness etc are in progress.

 

KDR I:

A coal based DRI technology that has been developed by Tata Steel with the aim of a substantial cost advantage in capital and operating costs over other DRI technologies.

 

ULCOS :

It is a large research project aimed at developing new processes that could achieve 50% less carbon di-oxide emissions per tonne of steel by 2050.  It includes the construction of a pilot plant to trial the new HIsarna iron making process at Tata Steel’ IJmuiden in the Netherlands. This new process, which was developed jointly with partners in the ULCOS consortium (www.ulcos.org), is expected to drastically reduce the energy consumption and CO2 emissions associated with the production of iron from iron ore. The project combines the capabilities of 48 organisations, including all major European steel makers and engineering companies.

 

Production of High Strength Steel

Four research groups in India and more than 10 departments in Europe are actively engaged in developing new products. The research output of these units cater to the needs of the Automotive sector that include the development of advanced high strength steels, new forming techniques, new and improved joining techniques, innovative coatings, improved fatigue life of components, etc.

 

Flat Products for Automobiles:

The aim of this thrust area is to develop a steel grade with 1000 mpa yield strength and 50% elongation.

 

High Strength Ductile Steels:

This development project is being done in collaboration with Tata Steel and Salzgitter. The project comprises two work streams- supply chain development and product development.

 

Advanced Coatings Developments

Advanced Coatings:

This thrust area emphasises on developing a suitable advanced coating on steel sheets to minimise the use of replacement of zinc (zero zinc) and to develop chrome free passivation for galvanised sheets.

 

Work on coatings is aimed at responding to the market drive to reduce cost of coatings and maintain the Group’s position in the market for coated products. Within this, four work streams have been defined i.e. physical vapour deposition, development of zinc free coated products for current and future applications, high speed galvanising and high-speed organic coating lines.

 

MagiZinc®

MagiZinc® is a hot dip zinc coating with 1-2% aluminium and 1-2% magnesium added to the zinc bath. These elements improve the corrosion resistance of galvanised steel between 4-20 times in a salty spray test. Moreover, the coating offers better formability with respect to zinc pollution in the pressing tool as found after multiple passes in the Linear Friction Test. First applications can be seen in the construction industry and include channels for ventilation systems and cable trays in large commercial and residential buildings.

 

In July 2008, MagiZinc® was awarded the Tata Group Innovation Award in the category of “Promising Innovations”.

 

EML-PVD:

Tata Steel has developed a PVD process based on electromagnetic levitation (EML) of the evaporating liquid in a vacuum. Tata Steel is upscaling this technology in collaboration with POSCO.

 

High-Strength Armour Plate:

Tata Steel in collaboration with the UK Ministry of Defence is developing a cost effective, high-strength armour plate. The basics of this new super bainite steel were originally developed by Cambridge University, QinetiQ and The Ministry of Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. Tata Steel subsequently developed the product to industrial scale using its laboratory, pilot and full-scale production facilities.

 

In order to facilitate the automotive industry, the portable strain analysis system (PHAST) combines expertise in three-dimensional measurement technology with in-depth materials knowledge and supports press shop operators in using new steel grades or help solve problems in pressing complex car parts. In 2008, an upgraded version of this system was launched, which provides analysis results within a few hours.

 

The current focus for the packaging market is on developments that lead to growth with existing products, particularly in the European market. For example, working closely with Tata Steel in Europe, Italy’s leading maker of cans for the paint and edible oil markets Gruppo ASA has developed Platinun®, a new family of containers for paint based on Protact® polymercoated packaging steel. Platinun® has attracted a great deal of interest among paint manufacturers.

 

Low Energy Process for the Production of Ferro Chrome

Tata Steel’s R&D centre at Jamshedpur has developed a new process technology that can be used either for the direct production of stainless steel or for producing ferro chrome in submerged arc furnaces (SAF) with reduced power consumption (from 3500 kwh/tonne to 2800 kwh/tonne) and coke consumption. Pilot scale experiments were done to establish the process parameters and develop engineering process flow sheet to put up a technology proving plant. In 2008, scale-up trials were carried out to establish the technical and economical feasibility of the process. The research team also worked closely with the Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology (IMMT), Bhubaneswar on a fluidised bed reactor process. Two variants of this process are being developed for the production of pre-reduced chrome for use in production of ferro chrome in the existing SAF process and chrome nuggets that are used as alloying addition in stainless and alloy steel making. The novel process uses non-coking coal as a reducing agent and energy source. Thus there is reduced need for low ash, low phosphorus (imported) coke.

 

Hydrogen Harvesting

Processes commonly used for slag cooling like slag granulation or quenching are not environment friendly and the heat contained in the molten slag is wasted. Tata Steel has developed a unique process to generate hydrogen-rich gas by utilising the heat of molten slag. This technology is set to produce hydrogen gas that will be used to pre-heat chrome ore concentrate briquettes, replacing oil. This process was demonstrated on a pilot project basis using a set up with 10 tonnes slag capacity, designed and developed in-house with the help of Tata Growth Shop, producing gas that contains over 70% hydrogen. International and Indian patent applications have been filed and work is now in progress to optimise the process for commercialisation at the Ferro Alloys plant. This has the potential to generate low cost hydrogen which can save energy and reduce the consumption of fossil fuels in the steel plant.

 

Viable Photovoltaic Coating System

Research and development in this field aims at creating state-of-the-art thin film photovoltaic systems that will seamlessly integrate with TSG products. Part of the work focuses on collaborating with DyeSol – a company specialising in photovoltaics and further developing their work. A second work stream concentrates on the further development of steel as a substrate for PV systems. In the course of the year 2008-09, a dedicated facility for the development of PV systems based on steel substrates, including a pilot line, was set up on the site of Tata Steel Colors in Shotton. The first coating trials on the pilot line were highly promising.

 

Energy Efficient Fluids

The objective is to develop next generation, energy efficient fluids as coolants and lubricants.

 

After laboratory tests had confirmed that suspending nanoparticles in an aqueous medium result in a higher heat transfer rate, subsequent tests have shown that the overall heat transfer was between 1.8 (at high temperatures) and 2.5 times (at low temperatures) than that of water. For industrial scale use however, methods for large-scale production and safe handling of these fluids were needed. As a first step to solve these problems, an effervescent tablet was developed that would dissolve in water in five seconds. A patent application for this has been filed.

 

As a second step, a new concept of a high-speed shear mixer for bulk nanofluid generation was demonstrated in October 2008 for 20,000 litres for use in wire box cooling in the wire rod mill of Indian Steel and Wire Products Limited, Jamshedpur. The higher cooling rate compared to normal water-cooling opens up a range of applications in process control and product design. Other prospective application areas for nano-coolants that have been investigated include increased cooling rates at the hot strip mill to enable low cost manufacturing of Dual Phase (DP) steels, stove cooling in blast furnaces, and heat recovery from waste gases and exhaust pipes.

 

Construction

Functional Steel Roofing:

A4 size composite panels with adhesive bonded EPP were evaluated for thermal stability, adhesion and cyclic humidity, and all tests were successful.

 

Steel Fibre Based Construction:

A new fibre designed by the R&D division was manufactured at Pune. The product has been commercialised in early 2009.

 

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Building on previous process improvement experience, the Tata Steel Group Process Improvement Teams have been set up with the aim to ensure that best practice in process technology is applied throughout the Group. This involves among other things, transferring technology that has been proven in one plant to other installations that are similar. The Group is continuously working on ways to reduce emissions. It is also working on the development of measuring techniques so that its operations comply with pollution reduction regulations.

A major project led by the European RD&T team to investigate the sources of fine and ultra fine particulate matter in the steel industry has identified two major sources of such particulate emission – one at a typical integrated steel plant and the other as an effect of long-range transport. These results will help the Company to anticipate future legislation and to take appropriate measures to reduce any emissions from steel making to lower levels. In India, experts from the European RD&T team’s environment department have assisted in assessing ways to maintain emissions from the Jamshedpur works at current levels even when production capacity is increased to 9.7 MTPA.

 

Some of the major facilities that facilitate process improvement are:

 

• Ore beneficiation facilities e.g. crushers, hydrocyclone, dense media cyclone, hydrosizer, dry and wet high intensity magnetic separators, spiral concentrator, floatation cell, slurry rheometer, surface tensiometer etc.
• Coke making and testing facilities e.g. 600 kg pilot oven, 7 kg carbolite oven, hammer mill, coal blending and stamping machines, dilatometer, plastometer, polarizing microscope, CSN test unit, Micum drum etc.
• Rotary hearth furnace for simulating smelting-reduction of Fe-bearing minerals
• Pot grate sinter making (batch mode, pilot scale)
• 1:10 scale-down blast furnace model for burden distribution studies
• Softening-melting equipment for simulating high temperature behaviour of blast furnace burden
• Water models for steel making studies (vessels, tundish, casters, ladle etc.)
• Particle image velocimetry
• Thermodynamic, FEM and CFD software e.g. Thermocalc, Factsage, ABAQUS, DEFORM, fluent, CFX
• Melting and heat treatment facilities including 25 & 50 kg induction furnaces, salt bath furnace etc.
• Forming simulation lab with advanced software like Pamstamp 2G, HyperMesh, LS-DYNA and RADIOSS, Unigraphis NX etc.
• 130 tonne servo-hydraulic forming press, automatic strain analyzer, electro-mechanical tensile testing, servohydraulic fatigue, thermo-mechanical simulator (Gleeble 1500)
• Welding facilities e.g. MF spot welding with robotic arrangement
• Materials characterisation facilities e.g. optical microscopes with image analysers (petrological, metallurgical), SEM with EBSD, EDS, FE SEM, QEMSCAN, XRD etc.
• Advanced corrosion lab, with salt spray testing, humidity chamber, squeeze roll, electrodeposition painting, FTIR, EIS, Kelvin probe, dip and spin coaters various paint testing devices etc.
• Hot dip simulation lab, with indigenously made zinc melting, sample heating and dipping facilities
• Plasma aided magnetron sputtering unit for thin film coating
• NDT facilities like ultrasonic C-Scan, flaw detection equipment (EPOCH 4), radiation measuring devices etc.

 

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• Lowering of West Bokaro clean coal ash from 17% to 13%
• Dewatering of coal through vacuum filtration, high rate thickening and use of dewatering aids
• Introduction of jigging at Noamundi for benefication of iron ore fines
• Production of 8% ash coal maintaining yield.
  1. Pilot scale testing of a new dense medium cyclone (DMC) design in collaboration with Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC), Australia
  2. A new air-core free dense medium cyclone developed at pilot scale for improving clean coal yield
  3. A 500-kg pilot plant is being commissioned at Vishakapatnam for demonstrating a new chemical leaching technology for producing low ash clean coal
  4. A pilot scale plant has been designed for organo-refining of coal
• Benefication of iron ore slimes to produce iron ore concentrate of 2% Alumina
• Solution for large scale processing and utilization of Jhama Coal
• Development (in collaboration with CLRI, Chennai) of an alternative environmental friendly process and implementation to minimise the carcinogenic hexavalent chromium in chromite concentrates at chrome ore beneficiation plant at Sukinda
• Optimisation of performance of the Gimbal Top distribution system in ‘C’ blast furnace during filling-in trials to obtain smooth start up and stabilsation of furnace operation
• Filling-in trials during start-up of H blast furnace with bell-less top distribution system to develop control logic for burden distribution inside the furnace for smooth ramp-up in production and better productivity
• Modification of bottom tuyeres location of BOF vessels of Port Talbot Tata Steel Europe based on the study carried out at R&D, resulting in improvement in bath agitation practices
• Suggestion for a new furniture for LD-3 tundish, based on computational fluid dynamics study to reduce its cost by 50% and without affecting its performance
• Development of Tata 800, a new grade for automotive application with UTS-800 MPa min, elongation-20% min, hole expansion-100% min.
• Development of Tata 600 with UTS-600 MPa min, elongation-24% min, hole expasion-120% min. for wheel disc application
• Development of telescopic front fork tubes with UTS-850 MPa min, elongation-15% min, Ra-0.6 micron max with single stage cold drawing process and commercialization for two wheeler applications
• Commercialisation of ERW tubes as an alternative to FM grades for plumbing application
• Lab scale development of a fine grained dual phase steel with high formability (r-bar=1.4)
• Lab scale development of a CR-TRIP steel with 960 MPa UTS and elongation-24%
• Development of a thin organic coating (TOC), application on galvanized wires and commercialisation as ‘Deluxe GI Wire’ by the Wire Division
• Significant reduction of the Zn consumption in tube galvanizing after implementation of a suitable inner wiping system in the Tubes Division based on a CFD study
• Development of a suitable lamellar foam “SHEETAL” for roofing application to provide both sound and thermal insulation compared to bare GC sheet
• Indigenous development of a pilot coating line
• Lab scale development of a Zn-Al coating on tubes by a single step hot dip galvanizing process, along with the formulation of a suitable fluxing material
• Development of improved MIG welding procedure for cage making for Nat Steel, Singapore
• Development of new QEMSCAN database for accurate analysis of Indian minerals, sinters and refractories
• Improvement of life of Rubber Rolls at PLTCM and ECL of CRM by about 6 times through development of rubber with improved material chemistry and processing technique
• Development of steel grade with improvised steel chemistry in order to eliminate customer complaints of thinning and cracking of flash butt welded wheel rims of HCV at Kalyani Lemerez
• Development of techniques for reduction of beehive code moisture and fines
• Development of appropriate materials for inner cover of batch annealing furnaces to take care of the premature bulging problem
• Elimination of black patch defects from the tin plate surfaces at TCIL
• Development of roll life at NBM through hardfacing
• Maiden evaluation of concrete quality of mill housing foundation in TSCR adopting ultrasonic pulse velocity test method
• Development and implementation of a predication system, termed high performance onling property predication system (HIPOPPS) that could predict the Ys, UTS and % Elongation to stop all testing of hot rolled coils.
• Employment of nanotechnology to achieve faster cooling of coal rolled strips in its batch annealing furnaces with a potential of saving eight minuted per hour in a fifteen hour cooling cycle.

 

 

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2006

• Supply of imported design and drawing for 4th Stove of 'G' Blast Furnace (Paul Wurth Italia, Italy
• Supply of imported design and drawing for 'H' Blast Furnace (Paul Wurth Italia, Italy)
• Supply of imported design and drawing for Sinter Plant No. 4 (Outokumpu Technology, Germany
• Supply of imported design and drawing for LD2 expansion project (SMS Demag, Germany
• Supply of imported design and drawings for convertor gas cleaning plants in LD shop 1 & 2 (SMS Demag, Germany
• Facility for quantitative estimation of minerals through Scanning Electron Microscope (Intellection Pty. Ltd., Australia)
• Polarising Microscope with Photometer and Imaging at R&D (Leica Mikrosysteme Vertrieb GmbH, Germany and PRESI S.A., France)

2007

• Variable Frequency Drive for Descaling Pump Motor at Hot Strip Mill (ABB, India)
• Sinter Plant No. 4, having a bed area of 204 sq. mtr. with ESP having lesser emission of 50 mg/Nm3
• Double Jaw Eye Vertical Tong For Batch Annealing Furnace at CRM
• SCADA System for Water Utilities 2007 Quantitative Estimation of Minerals by SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope)
• XRD (X-Ray Defraction) for quantitative phase and texture analysis

2009

• Electric Blowers for 'H' Blast Furnace
• Top Gas Recovery Turbine for 'H' Blast Furnaces
• Flat Cast House Design for 'H' Blast Furnace
• Internal Stoves for 'H' Blast Furnace
• Use of mixed gas in place for CO gas, for firing in 7th Lime Kiln
• New Billet Caster having all the latest facilities and having 9 m casting radius installed in an existing building suitable for 6 m casting radius, by going underground and taking the pass line to (-) 3.3 m level.
• Use of hydraulic mould occilator and hydraulically operated turn over cooling bed at CC 3 at LD Shop 1 Robotised Sample Testing Laboratory at LD Shop No. 1

2010

• Top Gas Recovery Turbine for 'G' Blast Furnace
• 4th Stove for 'G' Blast Furnace to facilitate relining of other stoves, without hampering hot metal production
• Continuous Emission Monitoring stations at 4 locations inside Tata Steel Works

2011

• Installation of Roll Coating & Drying System at Continuous Galvanising Line at Cold Rolling Mill.
• Use of Blast Furnace Gas at New Reheating Furnace using regenerative burners at Hot Strip Mill
• Installation of Chiller system for maintaining temperature of cooling medium for 'H' Blast Furnace
• Blower Drives at Blower House No. 5

 

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