Three important steps of electric arc furnace steelmaking

What is an electric arc furnace?

Industrial furnaces that produce electric arc heating through metal electrodes or non-metal electrodes are called electric arc furnaces.
Electric arc furnace (EAF) is an electric furnace that uses electrode arcs to produce high temperatures to smelt ores and metals.

Electric arc steelmaking furnace uses electric energy as the main energy source. The electric energy is arc drawn through the discharge of graphite electrodes and the charge to generate high temperatures above 2000 ~ 6000 ℃, and the scrap steel raw materials are melted by means of arc radiation, temperature convection, and heat conduction.

Electric arc furnace steelmaking is highly adaptable to the charge. It uses scrap steel as the main raw material, but it can also use molten iron (blast furnace or hot metal), sponge iron (DRI) or hot briquette (HBI), pig iron and other solid And liquid iron-containing raw materials.

The development of an electric arc furnace

After the middle of the 19th century, various large-scale smelting devices that realized electric-heat conversion have appeared one after another. In 1879, William Siemens first conducted research on the use of electric energy to melt steel charges. In 1889, an ordinary induction steelmaking furnace appeared. In 1900, the first steelmaking electric arc furnace designed by the French P.L.T.Heroult was put into production. Since then, the electric arc furnace steelmaking has made considerable progress in the past 100 years and has become one of the most important steelmaking methods.

1. Electric furnace steel accounted for a very low percentage before the 1950s, and it was a special type of steelmaking method.

2. After the 1950s, electric furnace steel has developed rapidly. Between 1950 and 1990, the total output of electric furnace steel in the world increased by nearly 17 times. The percentage of electric furnace steel has also increased from 6.5% to 27.5%.

3. Since the 1990s, the world’s electric furnace steel has maintained rapid development. Between 1990 and 1998, the world’s annual output of electric furnace steel increased by 51.23 million tons, and the percentage of electric furnace steel increased to 33.9%.

In the development process of electric arc furnace steelmaking, it has experienced ordinary power electric arc furnace → high power electric arc furnace → ultra-high power electric arc furnace.