Under the background of the "dual carbon" goal, exploring the development and application of breakthrough technologies and processes is the main development direction of the steel industry in the future.

At present, China's crude steel production is mainly based on blast furnace-converter steelmaking. The process involves the entire process from raw material processing to iron- and steelmaking, so it has a high energy consumption and carbon emission intensity. Among them, coal is the main fuel for the process and the main source of CO2 emissions.

In contrast, the short-process steelmaking process of electric arc furnace uses recycled scrap as the main raw material, electricity as the energy medium, and the arc thermal effect is used to melt the scrap into molten steel, realizing "replacing coal with electricity" and having a good carbon reduction effect. "Near-zero carbon emission" electric arc furnace steelmaking uses green and clean energy to smelt low-carbon or micro-carbon raw and auxiliary materials, and produces billets through "non-carbon-related" smelting technology, so as to achieve near-zero CO2 emissions in the steelmaking process.

What is the electric arc furnace short process steelmaking?

Electric arc furnace steelmaking is a steelmaking method that uses the thermal effect of the arc to heat the charge for melting. Electrical energy is input into the arc steelmaking furnace through graphite electrodes, and the arc between the electric pole and the charge is used as the heat source for steelmaking.

Electric arc furnace steelmaking uses scrap steel as the main raw material, alloy, lime, recarburisifier, etc. as auxiliary raw materials. The basic process of electric arc furnace steelmaking includes slag replenishment, metal charge, power transmission, melting, oxidation, reduction refining and steel production.

What are the green production technologies of electric arc furnaces?

The green production of electric arc furnaces is mainly to reduce energy consumption, reduce pollutant emissions and improve resource recycling efficiency. In order to realize the green production of electric arc furnace, key technologies such as waste heat recovery, coke substitution, and scrap preheating have been developed successively.

Waste heat recovery: the electric arc furnace smelting process will produce a large number of high-temperature dusty flue gas, which takes away about 11% of the total energy input of the electric arc furnace, up to 20%, the effective use of energy in the flue gas, can save a lot of energy, thereby indirectly reducing CO2 emissions.

Coke substitution: In the traditional electric arc furnace smelting process, carbon distribution is carried out to meet the requirements of heating of the molten pool and stirring and submerged arc of foam slag. In the green production of electric arc furnaces, the consumption of non-renewable fossil energy such as coke should be reduced as much as possible.

Scrap preheating: Scrap steel can shorten the smelting cycle of the electric arc furnace and reduce energy consumption, which is an important energy-saving technology for electric arc furnace smelting.

What is the development status of short-process steelmaking process of electric arc furnace in China?

With the advancement of the "dual carbon" goal, the rapid increase of scrap resources and the reduction of scrap prices, electric arc furnace steelmaking will become an important steelmaking process in China.

In the future, electric arc furnace steelmaking will further optimize the electric arc furnace steelmaking process based on the whole process of batching, power supply, oxygen supply, auxiliary energy input, slagging, etc., improve the electric arc furnace steelmaking process integrating operation, process, quality, cost and environmental protection, and finally achieve the goal of green, intelligent, efficient and low-cost steelmaking of electric arc furnace, and further promote the transformation and upgrading of the steel industry.