Kobe Steel Develops 2 Types New Titanium Sheet for PHE

Kobe Steel announced on Monday the firm developed two types of new titanium sheet for plate-type head exchanger (PHE), one of which is pre-lubricating-coat titanium sheet and the other of which is high thermal conducting titanium sheet. Both of the new products contribute to PHE’s performance improvement and energy saving. Kobe Steel succeeded in the world first commercialization of these products. The firm plans to start the sales in October and receive the first orders during the second half year of fiscal 2011 ending in March 2012.

About 20% of Kobe Steel’s titanium sheet sales volume is for PHE. The shipment is expected to continue healthy growth for a while. Kobe Steel tries to increase sales volume of pure titanium sheet for PHE by 20% in fiscal 2012 compared with fiscal 2010.

Pre-lubricating-coated titanium sheet is pure titanium sheet pre-covered by 1-micrometer-thick lubricating coating. Conventionally the users have needed to attach and peel off lubricating film by themselves or use press oil in processing pure titanium sheet for PHE. Kobe Steel’s product can improve productivity and reduce cost in these processes.

Kobe Steel’s pre-lubricating-coated titanium sheet also enables 10% deeper shaping and 10% thinner sheet using than ever. Meanwhile, the sheet shows 20% higher strength than conventional pure titanium sheet. Thus PHE’s fluid velocity can be raised, which contributes to higher performance and downsizing of PHE.

High thermal conducting titanium sheet has multi hundreds of several-ten-micrometer height bumps per square centimeter of its surface. This sheet realizes PHE’s higher thermal conductivity by 10% or more than ever. The users can reduce consumption of titanium plate and heating fluid as well as downsize piping and pumping equipments.