OJSC Byelorussian Steel Works (Russian: ОАО Белорусский металлургический завод, Belarusian: Беларускі металургічны завод, "БМЗ", BMZ) is a Belarusian company operating in the steel industry, centred in Zhlobin, Gomel Region. The main raw material of the enterprise is scrap. The company's products range from concast square steel billets, hot rolled round & square steel bars, rebars, hot rolled seamless pipe, high carbon wire rod, tyre steel cord, bead wire, hose wire, general purpose wire, to steel fiber. In 2020—2021, the company fired several employees trying to organize a strike during protests in Belarus, three of them were imprisoned.
A net detrimental effect of acid vapors on human health and environment characteristic for chemical methods of descaling the surface of steel wire rod, as well as the difficulties in the disposal of pickling sludge dictate the need for developing a new methodology free of the aforementioned shortcomings. A metallographic method for determining the mass of scale on the surface of a steel wire rod subjected to two-stage cooling is proposed. The tests were carried out in accordance with the requirements of current standards for assessing the accuracy (correctness and precision) of methods and measurement results. The proposed metallographic approach appeared advantageous for proved reliability of the scale mass determination with the required accuracy at a confidence level of 95%; for significant reduction in the material consumption due to the absence of the need for special sample preparation; reduction of the test time due to determination of metallographic parameters in parallel with optimization of the descaling procedure through scale dissolution in a pickling solution and protection of the base metal with the inhibitors; for elimination of using acids and, as a result, the necessity of waste disposal. Apart from quantifying the scale content, the method provides for determination of the phase component ratio. It is shown that the metallographic method, including determination of the scale mass by measuring the thickness of the layers of the scale phases (wustite, magnetite), can be used as an alternative to the traditional standardized method for rapid determination of the scale amount and X-ray structural analysis of the phase composition.
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It is shown that influence of climatic factor on production processes is necessary to be taken into account at planning of enterprise work: to carry out correction of production schedules, and also to vary specific norms of raw and materials consumption.
It is shown that at manufacture of metal cord of compact constructions there is a possibility to control by various processing methods the inclination of metal cord layers to migration.
