The trends for submissions to Ironmaking and Steelmaking this year have shown a drop. It is unclear at this point what this is related to. It is easy to blame Covid effects and there will be an element of that, but that is not the full story. There is a need to encourage organisations and their potential authors to share their research in a high-quality journal. The times from receipt of a paper to publication are coming down dramatically too. We are trying to encourage submissions from Europe and the USA. Other areas regularly supply submissions, but that is in a growth phase.
The papers selected for Steel World publication start with one on electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking. Some of the discussions at COP 26 in Glasgow, in November 2012, are pointing to this being the primary process for steel manufacture. However, the consequences of that are massive and obviously were not stated at COP 26. There was a great deal of activity on discussing the relative merits of EAF and BOS steel processing a number of years ago, but it seems that the activity there is low. One specific area was increased residual levels in autobody strip steel when sourcing EAF steel. Perhaps contributors to this journal may wish to submit their views in short articles on these subjects and areas related to it.
The second paper also investigates melting characteristics, but this time of iron ore under the effects of various fluxing agents. This is being linked to the productivity of Hlsarna. This is a process under development, with one of its objectives being to reduce CO2 emissions, which were quite clearly a topic at COP 26.
The third paper is one related to heat transfer in ESR slags and draws on the considerable expertise of Prof. Alec Mitchell in this specific field. In this paper, there is an example of refining a process model of the ESR process. What is being presented is a case for the refinement of the heat conduction model, which creates a better understanding of the behaviour of the process. However, the concept being presented may possibly have applications in other metallurgical processes.