Energy Conservation

Hi, Garrett,

How much have you done, yourself, to research these questions? How long do you have to put your report together? Are your questions just a statement of the report assignment?

I'm sure there are lots of people here who could help (unfortunately I'm not among them; this isn't my forté), but please don't expect to get your report written for you - you won't!

A good first step to getting help and advice from CR4 is to register.

You are so BAAAAAAAAAD! I hope. one day to sit down and buy you a few beers.

James

FIrst reply as per JohnDG.

Ducon is actually Ducon Energy Management Systems. You can type this in google & google.

1) What methods are the best energy savings practices that you know are put to use in the steel industry? How do you implement those methods?

Over 100s

2) How much do you think annually a company could save if they applied the energy savings methods?

Over 30 % without co-generation.Viability co-generation then additional savings 30%.

3) What are the various advantages and disadvantages of implementing these methods?

Advantage is Saving . Disadvantage is Shutting down the Plant since high energy costs supersedes the profits.

You need to do your own reaserch . Visit these Plants, undertake detailed surveys to detect areas of losses . Study on those areas, check viabilities of implementation Vs saving & payback.Go to your University Library and take out Final Year Reports made out by previous students. Study all of them , they plan out yours.

This is not a subject that anybody in CR4 and help you out by just replying your questions as they come.

Alcoa has done lots of very good things along these lines. Although aluminum and steel are made in entirely different ways, reading about what Alcoa has done would give you some perspective on what steel plants can do (and are doing in many cases).

When you have some specific questions (e.g., "In changing a line from ingot making and slabbing to continuous casting, what is the potential for energy savings? If you have real world data, from a conversion, that would be helpful."), then I think some people here could help you. People will naturally shy away from questions requiring full book-length answers -- if you google, you will find several books written about specifically this subject in this industry.

As a researcher and technical consultant in the cokemaking side of the steel industry, I had the opportunity many years ago to do technical and economic studies of the potential for the dry quenching of blast furnace coke. At that time, when energy costs were relatively low in the US, management made the decision not to spend the capital to use this well developed technology in the US, although numerous installations were operational in Russia, Germany and Japan. For the most part, the waste heat recovered by the dry quenching operation is used for steam raising, but the potential exists for coal preheating ( for high throughput coke oven batteries) or a number of other uses. With today's high energy costs, I would expect there are opportunities to extend this technology in the cokemaking/steelmaking arena.
It has been a long time (~ 30 yrs) since I did the technical studies, but I believe there are at last 1 MM BTU/ton of coke quenched that can be recovered. For a minimal size coke plant (~ 1000 NT/day) that amounts to a substantial energy savings.

Look at Nucor Steel,they are an Electric Furnace Mill.They started the mini-mill concept,with the electric mill.Look it up. Good Luck.

I am well aware of Nucor Steel, have visited their mills and know some of their superintendents. Unfortunately, they do not produce any new steel. All the steel they process is from scrap steel via the electric furnace route, which is not particularly energy efficient. They make no new raw steel from iron, limestone and coke in blast furnaces, nor do they produce complex grades of steel. Nucor Steel was the first (or one of the first mini-mills), utilizing EF route to produce low grade steels. They still cannot produce rephos grade steels, etc. used by transplant steelmakers from offshore (eg Japan.). Besides, their costs per ton of product are high relative to BF route.

The poster was asking for advice on where energy could be conserved. Every major steel producer uses the BF route due to overall costs. Coke production is a major energy consumer in an integrated steel mill. Dry coke quenching is a practical way to recover or conserve overall energy.

Look up Nucor Steel,Electric Furnace,Mini -Mill Concept. very successful saved what US. had left in the steel processing.Good luck.

THROUGHENERGY aUDIT

1) What methods are the best energy savings practices that you know are put to use in the steel industry? How do you implement those methods?

Ok. Steel industry. No doubt steel industry is to be pushed. It is the industry that is sustaining the industrial world. Nevertheless, nowadays, for "selected applications" such as best energy saving parcies there are much better materials than steel...and their use is indeed worth

2) How much do you think annually a company could save if they applied the energy savings methods

AN INCREDIBLE LOT AMOUNT.

3) What are the various advantages and disadvantages of implementing these methods?

Advanges: ALL

Disadvantages: you have old people formed with old conceptions. Their ego will be hurt. But in the world people are DYING because of ENERGY LOSSES....so please, rate what is worth?

I hope to hear from you as soon as possible thank you very much for your time

Sincerely,

I do some work in cooling/transfer bed design. In fact, I was at Nucor Marion a few weeks ago to help oversee the installation of a (mostly) new cooling bed.

It seems to me that there is a lot of heat energy available in the cooling process that could be converted, although I haven't seen or heard of it being done.

Stirling Stan should visit a steel mill, I'm sure he'd have a few ideas.