Published by
April 2012
Welcome to the April issue of STI. The issue is packed full of features including articles on Ironmaking, Coating, conference reports and a new feature titled Know Your Steel.
Ironmaking articles include Air humifidication to improve sintering, and A new burner design for steam generation fuelled by blast furnace gas.
The Coating feature includes articles on Paint systems for steel and a paper on Efficient furnaces for batch galvanizing.
The Know Your Steel feature will run for the rest of the year and is aimed at metallurgy for non-metallurgists.
Front cover courtesy of Midrex
Recent News
Demand for steel to boost iron ore production
Growing demand looks to bring about an evolution in the US iron industry, despite North America having historically been a modest iron ore producing and consuming region, according to a new report by mining analysts GBI Research.
Indian Industry Environmental Best Practices Award
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has conferred its Environmental Best Practices Award for 2012 on BILT Graphic Paper Products Ltd (BGPPL) for the ‘most innovative environmental project.’ The award was presented for Carbon sequestering at BGPPL’s unit at Ballarpur which has installed a unit to precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) used as a filler in the paper industry.
China losing price advantage
The Chinese steel industry losing some of its competitive edge According to UK based steel market analysts, MEPS in its latest report in China Steel Insight. Ex-mill steel prices (excluding taxes) in April 2011, were close to their peak values in all countries.
Latin America steel growth forecast 6% in 2012
The Latin American Steel Association (Alacero – formerly ILAFA) reports that a meeting of its Executive Committee chaired by Mr Raul Gutierrez Muguerza discussed the prospects of the steel industry in the light of the report recently published by World Steel Association in its 2012 and 2013 outlook for world steel consumption.
Recent Features
American Iron and Steel Institute calls for further Government intervention
The American Iron and Steel Institute has a mission to influence public policy and educate and shape public opinion in support of a strong, sustainable US and North American steel industry committed to manufacturing products that meet society’s needs.
In mid April, the organisation held a briefing to address various matters of importance to steel producers in North America.
John P Surma, chairman and CEO of United States Steel Corp, Pittsburgh and also the current chairman of AISI said that while the US steel industry is clearly in recovery mode, it is still facing significant challenges to its international competitiveness, including burdensome tax rates, uncertain energy costs, inadequate investments in infrastructure, increasing regulatory burdens and foreign unfair trade practices.
“These issues are not new, but the urgency for us to address them is very, very immediate,” he stressed.
Other topics addressed were a recent report showing the steel industry is a major factor in the recent rebound of the US manufacturing sector, that shale gas will be a major driver of development, support for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline extension project linking US refineries to the Canadian tar sands and a call for congress to enact a long term bill in support of transport infrastructure projects. The briefing concluded with a call for fair trade, highlighting China as the chief transgressor.
To download a report of the full presentation please visit the web link below.
The sustainability footprint of steelmaking by-products
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), originally derived to assess the carbon footprint of manufactured goods, is being applied to production processes where it can be manipulated in a variety of ways each yielding a different result to claim the lowest carbon footprint for a particular process. This paper uses the example of blast furnace slag as a replacement for cement clinker and shows, depending on the method of allocation, a saving of 0.24tCO2/t of steel produced or 0.64tCO2/t of cement produced. By J P Birat*
The skies may have brightened but the gloom lingers on
A report of the 26th Steel Success Strategies, New York
Stadco – A return to output for automotive pressings
Stadco, UK’s largest independent supplier of automotive body-in-white pressings, celebrated the opening of its fifth UK production site located in a former Japanese owned pressworks –
refurbishing the factory buildings, services and two press lines in just three months following an upturn in premium car production in UK.