Italy-based Danieli & C. S.p.A.
has signed new orders and completed installations recently that point to
bustling global activity in the scrap-fed electric arc furnace (EAF)
steelmaking sector.
In
April, Danieli said the Liberty Steel business unit of the United Kingdom-based
GFG Alliance had placed an order for a Danieli Digimelter to melt scrap and
direct-reduced iron (DRI) at Liberty’s Whyalla Works in Australia.
The
order helps solidify the likelihood that GFG will embark on its blast
furnace-to-EAF conversion project at
Whyalla that has been on again/off again for
several years.
Danieli
says the Digimelter purchased by Liberty Steel is a “zero bucket” type. “It is
an endless continuous-scrap charging and preheating system that provides
optimal scrap charge, reducing energy consumption and minimizing the
environmental footprint through better energy exploitation and consistent
production rate improvement,” says the firm. Danieli says the new Digimelter is
expected to start melting by the middle of 2025.
The
Italian technology and equipment firms says Liberty had previously ordered two
Danieli Digimelters for installation at its Ostrava steelmaking complex in the
Czech Republic, which Danieli calls the first European plant converting from blast
furnace to EAF production.
In
North America, Danieli says Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada-based Algoma
Steel Inc. is in the process of installing a Danieli Digimelter-based “new
green steel shop with design capacity of 3.7 million tons.”
While
that blast furnace-to-EAF conversion project is underway, as part of it Danieli
says it recently shipped to Canada melt shop cranes and a Q-SYM2 “automated
scrap yard, featuring automatic cranes, scrap visual-recognition, and automatic
scrap sorting and charging” equipment.
Says
the Italian firm, “Three members of Algoma Steel’s engineering team recently
travelled to Danieli Thailand to conduct extensive factory acceptance testing
on the cranes before shipping [them] to Canada.”
Danieli
says four additional fully automated cranes are being built for the Algoma
scrap yard, and one has been inspected. The cranes will be equipped with
scanning technology Danieli says makes it possible to check “for any
undesirable type of material within the scrap before the transfer into the
scrap bucket.”
Algoma
indicated in February that
startup of its EAF conversion project is expected to occur in mid-2024.