The Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) will become the largest producer of steel worldwide, replacing the conventional route through the blast furnace and BOF. In most developed countries the EAF process is already the main steelmaking reactor. This is due to many advantages, such as much lower emissions of CO2, higher flexibility in furnace capacity and higher flexibility in the raw materials such as scrap, direct reduced iron (DRI) and pig iron. The EAF process has also experienced a larger level of automation that provides a higher productivity. However, the EAF process also has a large number of limitations in comparison with the BOF, for example; (1) use of an expensive type of energy (electric energy), (2) very poor stirring conditions which results in lower decarburization rates, (3) residual elements in steel scrap, (4) cost of scrap can be higher than iron ore, (5) dependance on DRI to produce higher quality steels, (6) higher heat losses, (7) lower metallic yield (slag leaves the furnace losing iron and heat). If the EAF process overcomes these limitations it will be able to fully overcome the BF-BOF route and become the dominant process for steelmaking in the 21st century.

This book discusses in detail 15 methods to decrease energy consumption in the EAF. Decreasing energy consumption requires an integral approach which means that all methods should be fully understood and optimized.

Autorentext

Alberto Conejo is a professor at the University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB), School of Metallurgical and Ecological Engineering, since September 2018. His academic background and research activities have been focused on ferrous metallurgy, in particular application of thermodynamics and kinetics of gas-solid reactions, kinetics of steel refining in the ladle furnace, physical modeling of bottom stirring in metallurgical ladles, slag foaming in the EAF, mathematical modeling of DRI melting in the EAF, etc. He worked pretty close with the steel industry in Mexico for more than 20 years and currently is technical advisor for the HBIS group in China.

He has published more than 85 technical articles in peer-reviewed journals of high impact factor and a total of about 200 publications including conference proceedings. His h index factor from Scopus is 20.

Professor Conejo has received several national and international awards for his work on slag foaming in the EAF, support to the steel industry and mathematical modeling of the EAF involving DRI melting. His most recent award was the National Friendship Award by the Chinese government in 2021.