Ladle Shroud (Long Nozzle) with Zirconia Slag-Line Band for Sequence Casting

Ladle shrouds — also called long nozzles — do two jobs at once. Mechanically they carry the steel stream from ladle to tundish. Metallurgically they seal that stream from air, which is a steel-cleanliness function rather than a refractory one. Both matter, and they fail in different places.

Slag Band, Not Body, Ends the Shroud

On a long sequence, the body of the shroud is rarely the problem. The wear concentrates in a narrow band at the slag line, where the shroud passes through the tundish slag layer. That band dissolves, thins, and eventually the shroud has to be changed — regardless of how much body material is left.

XZK-CLTZ addresses this directly with a 55% ZrO₂ band at the slag line, at 3.00 g/cm³ density, bonded into an alumina-carbon body. Zirconia resists slag-band dissolution far better than alumina-carbon, and the additional cost is normally recovered through additional heats per shroud.

Reading the Two Grades

• XZK-CLTZ — alumina-carbon body (45% Al₂O₃, CCS 22 MPa) with a zirconia slag band (ZrO₂ ≥55%). For aggressive slag and long sequences.
• XZK-CLTA — all alumina-carbon, with a higher-alumina slag-line section (50% Al₂O₃). For milder duty where a zirconia band is not justified.

Steel Quality Is Part of the Specification

An open stream absorbs nitrogen and oxygen from the air and reoxidises the steel, which shows up downstream as inclusions. Properly shrouded casting measurably reduces nitrogen pickup. If cleanliness specifications are tight at your plant, the shroud is part of the quality system — not just a consumable.

Preheat-Free

Preheat-free shrouds remove the preheat step and the thermal shock event that accompanies it. For plants running tight ladle turnaround, or without dedicated preheat capacity, this saves time per sequence and removes a common cause of start-up cracking. It is often worth more than the material price difference suggests.

Supply

Quoted per set, typically 200–500 pieces minimum, 20–35 days from drawing approval. Lengths, bore profiles and band position are made to drawing so the shroud fits your ladle-to-tundish geometry. Dimensional inspection reports and batch test data ship with every order.

Where This Grade Sits in the Lining System

Flow-control refractories are consumed on the caster's schedule, so the specification is as much about dimensional repeatability and interchangeability with your existing mechanism as it is about composition. A plate or shroud that fits but varies by a millimetre between lots costs more in breakouts than it saves in unit price.

XZK supplies ladle shroud (long nozzle) as one zone of a zoned package rather than as a standalone item: the grades normally zoned alongside it — among them monobloc stopper rod — are documented on the continuous casting functional refractories page, and the vessel-level architecture — where each zone starts and ends, and which mechanism actually limits the campaign — is set out on the tundish flow control and steel ladle and RH/VD pages.

Campaign data measured on this class of lining — including the wear profile that drove grade selection — is published in the Colakoglu Metalurji slab caster flow control programme project reference.