Italy’s Danieli & C. Officine Meccaniche SpA said it had received orders for eight of its Danieli Zerobucket (EAF) electric arc furnaces, adding that the orders had been placed by five different Chinese steelmakers over the past six months.
Danieli lists China-based steel producers as Qiananshi Jiujiang, Hebei Puyang, Tangshan Zhongshou, Changshu Longteng and Zhejiang Yuxin. Each of the companies, Danieli explains, “has chosen Danieli’s original continuous horizontal scrap loading system, which provides smooth, endless, hot loading of scrap. »
As China increased its steel production over the previous four decades, it relied heavily on blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace (BOF) technology. This has led steel producers in other countries to criticize the huge carbon footprint of the Chinese sector.
Other industry analysts have looked at China’s growing scrap metal production and predicted that if the country doesn’t start installing more EAF capacity soon, it could become a major net exporter of scrap metal.
The purchased Zerobucket technology allows for a range of filler mixes, Danieli explains, including hot metal, direct reduced iron (DRI), HBI (hot briquetted iron) and scrap. The furnace can operate with up to 80% hot metal load, “replacing BOF converters and achieving outstanding results in short set-to-set times, increasing overall steel plant productivity,” says Danieli.
The furnaces ordered will have capacities of 210 to 330 tonnes per hour and are expected to start operating between late 2022 and early 2023.
Four of the EAFs were ordered by Qiananshi Jiujiang, based in Tangshan, China, while the one ordered by Zhejiang Yuxin will be installed with what Danieli calls the first Tornado scrap conveyor system.
The Tornado, patented by Danieli, is described by the company as a continuous scrap charge design that includes a “variable geometry preheat zone to automatically adjust and adapt the free area, to create the optimum conditions for flue gas velocity, temperature and process control”. The variable section feature is designed to allow “the best preheating results with different types of scrap available on the market, thus offering maximum purchasing flexibility”, according to Danieli.
