Danieli helps China's steel industry accelerate its transition to electric furnace steelmaking

The "dual carbon" initiative represents a broad and profound systemic transformation of the economy and society. The implementation of the "dual carbon" strategy must be organically integrated with the promotion of advanced development concepts and the advancement of existing key tasks. The steel industry, a pillar of the national economy, is undergoing a profound industrial transformation that will impact its future competitiveness. Guided by the "dual carbon" goals, the industry is no longer solely focused on scale efficiencies; instead, it is placing greater emphasis on promoting green and intelligent upgrades throughout the entire process through technological innovation. Electric furnace mini-process steelmaking, a key path to energy conservation and carbon reduction, is experiencing unprecedented development opportunities. Efficient and clean steelmaking technologies are increasingly becoming a key enabler for sustainable development. Against this backdrop, Danieli's zero-feed basket technology, with its comprehensive advantages in energy efficiency and adaptability to raw materials, is helping Chinese steelmakers accelerate their green transformation.

Since 2017, Danieli has signed contracts for 31 zero-feed basket electric furnace projects, with clients ranging from state-owned to large private steel companies. Nineteen of these have been successfully commissioned. All of these furnace projects have rapidly reached full production after hot trials and fully met expected performance targets. In 2024 alone, Danieli successfully completed hot trials for five electric furnaces in western and eastern Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Shanghai.

Among them, Danieli delivered the first "TORNADO System" using ECS ​​horizontal preheating and continuous charging technology to Zhejiang Yuxin Industry. This system intelligently adjusts the height of the preheating section cover according to the thickness of the scrap layer, maintaining a stable air flow cross-section within the preheating duct, significantly improving flue gas preheating efficiency and reducing electrical energy consumption.

Sustainable Advantages of the Zero-Basket Electric Furnace

While improving performance, the zero-basket electric furnace offers a range of sustainable advantages:

Optimizing energy utilization and shortening smelting cycles: Through scrap preheating and energy recovery, power-on time is reduced by 10% and power-off time by 40%-50%, significantly improving overall performance.

Reducing operating costs: The ECS horizontal preheating and continuous charging system utilizes waste heat from flue gases, minimizing electrical and chemical energy consumption. The overall energy consumption per ton of molten steel can be reduced by approximately 50 kWh, achieving significant energy savings.

Feedstock flexibility: Efficient operation is achieved even with low scrap density, demonstrating exceptional flexibility in scrap selection and mix selection.

Precise process control: The system integrates a chemical energy package and Q-Reg electrode regulation system, ensuring stable arc coverage, dynamic adjustment of oxygen and carbon injection, efficient management of the smelting curve, and maximum active power input.

Looking ahead, Danieli will continue to lead the green transformation of China's steel production. Market demand for raw material flexibility is increasing. Customers expect EAFs to be able to process a variety of raw materials, including molten iron, direct reduced iron, hot briquetted iron, pig iron, and scrap, while also featuring energy-saving technologies such as continuous charging. Furthermore, the Chinese market is increasingly interested in automated solutions designed to minimize operator requirements. Danieli has become a reliable supplier of advanced EAF technologies, offering comprehensive EAF automated steelmaking solutions, including automatic tapping, automatic temperature measurement and sampling, and deep learning-based scrap identification and classification systems. As an important partner of users in China's steel industry, Danieli will continue to help domestic customers achieve the sustainable development goals set by the country and jointly promote the green steel transformation process.