Heat recovery in steel plants to boost competitiveness

Kristijan Plesnik: Indeed, we are already using some of

the waste energy from our electric arc furnaces, so called UHPs, Ultra High Power furnaces. We have had very good experiences with that. ETEKINA draws on this but takes it further. The project has a new approach,

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as it gives us the opportunity to use waste energy from most other gas furnaces. We can benefit from this project as we know that our company is a rather big consumer of energy. For us, this is a big plus as we can reduce this consumption.

ESCI: I can imagine that the steel industry is facing quite a lot of challenges: for example, the tariffs the US are imposing on steel while you are exporting quite a bit of your steel. How important is energy or its costs for you in this context?

Kristijan Plesnik: I would say our main market is the European Union. This means Germany and other countries in the vicinity. Of course, we also export to America, about 15 %. But our production is foremost vulnerable when it comes to energy product prices, which represent 15% of all annual production costs. With or without Trump, we expect a rise in prices of electricity and natural gas in the future.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-recovery-steel-boost-competitiveness.html#jCp