Our expert team can work with you to explore the various ways of optimizing your furnace design and leveraging oxyfuel combustion or oxygen enrichment to increase productivity and efficiency in steelmaking
Gases and Application Technologies for the Steel Industry
Improving Productivity, Efficiency and Quality in Steelmaking
Application Skills and Industry Expertise to Help Steelmakers Meet Growing Market Pressures
Steelmakers face intense market pressures and are constantly searching for ways to remain competitive while reducing their carbon footprint. Looking at the value chain of steel production, the reheating process step is a key success factor in the drive for optimization.
We have the skills and the application expertise to take reheating efficiency to the next level. Our metallurgists work with integrated iron and steelmakers and electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmakers to develop individualized solutions with the potential to continually improve productivity, quality and efficiency.
Lower Costs with COJET® Gas Injection System
Our COJET gas injection system uses an injector nozzle that delivers a laser-like coherent jet of oxygen at supersonic speeds into the molten bath in an electric arc furnace (EAF).
Highlights
- Penetrates deeper into EAF molten bath than conventional supersonic jets
- Burner, lancing, solids injection and post combustion from furnace wall
- Speeds decarburization and better slag-metal stirring
- Decreases electrode consumption, refractory erosion, arc flair damage and maintenance gunning
- Operates with NG, LPG, COG, fuel oil, and hydrogen
Save Energy with OXYGON® Ladle Preheating Systems
OXYGON technology moves beyond conventional burner designs to harness highly efficient flameless oxyfuel combustion to heat transfer and holding vessels and maintain the temperature of hot, liquid metal between melting and casting operations.
OXYGON preheating systems are available for different vessel sizes and different levels of flexibility.
Highlights
- Faster heating times and greater capacity
- Predictable, consistent ladle temperatures
- Extended vessel refractory lining life
- Significant energy savings
- Marked drop in emissions
- Reduced number of ladles in operation
- Integrated burner pilot and UV cell
- Leak testing for robust safety
- Simpler, more compact and lighter installation than air/fuel systems with recuperative/regenerative technologies
- Flowtrains for fuel and oxygen
Increase Reheating Flexibility and Efficiency with REBOX®
Our REBOX portfolio of flameless oxyfuel solutions is tailored to different furnace and customer requirements. REBOX solutions can be incorporated into new and existing furnaces without increasing the existing footprint. They are compatible with all conventional fuels and most types of furnaces, from large pushers and walking beams through rotary hearths, roller hearths to various batch furnaces. REBOX can also be selectively deployed on demand.
Highlights
- Less fuel consumption due to improved heat transfer
- Higher thermal efficiency due to elimination of nitrogen
- Less flue gas and NOx emissions
- More uniform temperature inside the furnace
Decarbonizing Heavy Industry with a Light Gas
The steel industry is responsible for roughly 5% of global CO2 emissions, and finding ways to reduce emissions is high on steelmakers' agendas. ArcelorMittal Europe, for instance, announced its target to reduce CO2 emissions by 30% by 2030 and targets carbon neutral operations by 2050.Using hydrogen as a combustion fuel has become an increasingly interesting area of research as steelmakers look to lower their reliance on fossil fuels to lower emissions. When hydrogen fuel burns, it reacts with oxygen and is converted back into water. With steam as the only by-product of hydrogen combustion, hydrogen offers a promising option to tackle emissions. In DRI, for instance, it can be used to replace natural gas to drastically reduce carbon emissions. Another path is to use hydrogen in the blast furnace, which allows for up to 20% of emissions reduction.
Hydrogen can be also used for reheating before rolling, as Linde and Ovako successfully demonstrated in 2020. Hofors, a small town 2.5 hours north of Stockholm, was the scene of the first-ever full-scale test of heating steel using hydrogen as a fuel and oxygen as an oxidant before rolling. Carried out as part of a collaboration between Ovako and Linde, the test took place in one of Ovako's pit furnaces at the Hofors rolling mill.
Traditionally, propane is used to heat the pit-furnaces where steel ingots are heated to temperatures above 1200oC before they are rolled into different shapes for further processing. But during this test, the Ovako furnace was heated using hydrogen. Rather than coming from oil, hydrogen fuel was created through electrolysis - the process of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity.
Comprehensive analysis of the steel following the test revealed that heating with hydrogen did not adversely affect the steel's quality. This positive outcome lays the groundwork for introducing hydrogen as fuel for heating in full-scale rolling mill furnaces, which can help reduce the steel industry's environmental impact.
Switching to low-carbon operations in the steel industry will take several years, but a range of existing technologies can already help the industry make significant reductions to its emissions today.