Analysis and optimisation on the energy consumption of electric arc furnace steelmaking

ABSTRACT

To clarify the influence factors and optimization direction of energy consumption of EAF steelmaking, this study established a complete mass and energy balance model, comprising infiltrated air and off-gas flowrate measurement model and radiative and convective heat loss model, to forecast power and oxygen consumption. The influence of power supply, oxygen supply, carbon injection, infiltrated air, and hot metal charging on the power consumption of EAF is discussed. The results show that optimizing production parameters will effectively reduce power consumption, especially improve the infiltrated air flowrate when there are sufficient combustible gases, which is conducive to energy conservation and emission reduction. Additionally, due to the intensive energy and carbon input in the upstream process of hot metal production, the energy consumption and carbon emissions of hot metal charging EAF are much higher than those of 100% scrap charging EAF.

KEYWORDS:

• Mass and energy balance
• electric arc furnace
• process model
• energy consumption
• carbon emissions
• post combnustion
• power consumption
• hot metal charging‌

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their thanks for the support by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (NO.52004023&NO.52074024&52274313), the Key R&D Projects of Jiangxi Province (20214BBG74005), China Baowu Low Carbon Metallurgy Innovation Foudation (BWLCF202108) and Project of “Spring City Scholar”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.