On July 4,2017, the Energy Faculty of the University of Duisburg-Essen organized an excursion to ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe AG in Duisburg to experience the complete steelmaking process first hand.

Approximately 40 students from different semesters and research assistants took part in the project.

The impressive site is almost five times the size of Monaco and is controlled by 13,000 employees, which corresponds to a small German town. Four blast furnaces produce more than 30,000 tons of crude iron every day, and around twelve million tons of steel are produced here every year!

After a safety briefing for the tour and a half-hour presentation of the company, including a visitor's film showing the entire process from the delivery of the raw materials to the finished steel products, the bus took visitors across the plant grounds equipped with safety goggles, helmet, ear protection and a bottle of water.

Flat carbon steel is produced here 365 days a year. This requires ore, coal and other raw materials that are delivered by ship or train.

The bus was used to reach various operating units and explained to the participants their function in the process of crude iron extraction and steel production.

From the outside, you could see, for example, the coking plant, the sintering plants and the upgraded rail network on which the individual steel products are transported to other areas for further processing.

Inside the facilities, the participants witnessed a blast furnace tapping, saw the huge containers of a converter steel mill filled with liquid crude iron pass by, observed glowing steel slabs rolled through a hot strip rolling mill and then wound up to 1,000 times their length, and saw how the steel rolls were rolled even thinner and wound up in a hot-dip galvanizing line.

Other highlights of the ThyssenKrupp-Steel plant tour were the filling of torpedo cars in a large blast furnace and the facilities for electrical system monitoring (control center), which is equipped with a lot of electronics.Facade construction or household appliance industry, heavy plate, hot-rolled strip, cold strip, uncoated, hot-dip coated and coil-coated - a wide range of steel products that are shipped from Duisburg to anywhere in the world.

It was an impressive tour.