Steel–Titanium Co-Line Short-Process Manufacturing of High-Quality Titanium Plate and Strip

Steel–Titanium Co-Line Short-Process Manufacturing of High-Quality Titanium Plate and Strip

For the titanium industry, this is far more than an ordinary award. It marks the first time that the three long-standing pain points plaguing China's titanium plate and strip sector—high cost, limited specifications, and reliance on imports—have been systematically overcome through a full-chain process reconstruction. It will also directly reshape the cost structure, application boundaries, and capacity landscape of titanium materials in the years ahead.

Conventional titanium plate and strip production has long followed a lengthy route: two or more VAR (vacuum arc remelting) melts, multiple forging heats, and multiple rolling passes. This extended process chain is energy-intensive and delivers low material yield, ultimately driving up the cost of finished products. The core breakthrough of the "steel–titanium co-line" project is the invention of a single-heat, forging-free direct rolling process for titanium plate and strip. It bypasses the cumbersome forging stage of the traditional route entirely, enabling continuous production of titanium plate and strip on existing, mature steel production lines.

The gains delivered by this process innovation are tangible:

• Overall production flow and total manufacturing cost are both reduced by more than 20%, benchmarked against the conventional long-process route for titanium plate and strip.
• Structural innovations in the electron beam cold hearth furnace—such as the "twin ingots in one furnace" design—raise production efficiency and capacity by a further 30% and cut manufacturing cost by another 10%.
• Full-range, stable production has been achieved across the entire specification spectrum: 4,400 mm ultra-wide titanium alloy heavy plate, 2.5 mm thin-gauge wide hot-rolled coil, 1.5 m wide cold-rolled strip coil, and 0.1 mm ultra-thin strip. Supporting technical breakthroughs include the electron beam cold hearth melting process for large, highly homogeneous ingots; a predictive model for element evaporation rates in quinary titanium alloy systems with 98% accuracy; and a green recycling technology enabling a revert (recycled feedstock) addition ratio exceeding 65%, reaching 100% in certain scenarios, further diluting costs at the raw material end. The full series of titanium plate and strip products developed under this project outperforms conventional processes in both process stability and mechanical properties, and its coverage of product specifications and grades now surpasses that of leading international producers.