Electric Arc Furnace Steelmaking Process

author: Anna

2024-06-23

Electric Arc Furnace Steelmaking Process

The function of electric furnace steelmaking process is to process raw materials into molten steel with qualified composition and temperature at a certain rate.

In terms of the current general engineering technology level, the main characteristics of the electric furnace steelmaking process in the process are two points:

(1) The electric furnace steelmaking process is an intermittent operation, and the smelting cycle is about 60 minutes. In order to ensure that the continuous casting process can achieve multi-furnace continuous casting, the input of electrical energy, chemical energy and physical energy should match it.

To further increase the production rate, the smelting cycle has a trend of being less than 50 minutes or even 45 minutes.

However, the shortening of the smelting cycle shortens the power-on time accordingly and increases the proportion of non-power-on time, which is unreasonable for the utilization of power supply capacity.

According to the current development trend, we can see the signs of making full use of waste heat and realizing continuous steelmaking.

At present, each electric furnace should produce 7,000 to 10,000 steel per year, that is, the utilization coefficient per unit furnace capacity or the annual production rate is (0.7 to 1.0) million t/(t a);

(2) The qualified molten steel provided by electric furnace steelmaking is the material basis for ensuring the efficient and smooth operation of downstream processes.

The productivity of electric furnace steelmaking should match the productivity of hot rolling. In the 1960s and 1970s, the productivity of the hot rolling unit for long sections was about 300,000 t/a.

If the annual production rate of electric furnace steelmaking was 0.5 million t/(t a), the corresponding electric furnace capacity was 60t.

At present, the productivity of the hot rolling unit for long sections has increased to (700,000 to 800,000 t/a), and the corresponding electric furnace capacity should be 700,000 to 100t.

The productivity of single-stream thin slab continuous casting and rolling process is (1 million to 1.2 million) tons/year, and the capacity of the steelmaking electric furnace can be 1.2 million to 1.5 million tons.

When the hot rolling productivity reaches more than 2 million tons/year, the capacity of the steelmaking electric furnace will exceed 200 tons.

Due to the technical conditions such as electric furnace transformers and graphite electrodes, it is not reasonable.

Therefore, hot-rolled wide-band enterprises should not use electric furnaces for steelmaking (in addition, the adverse effects of residual metal elements in scrap steel raw materials on the quality of plate and strip materials should also be considered).

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