STI April 2013

Environment is a key feature in the April edition of Steel Times International with nearly half the issue devoted to this topic.

Three articles relate to scrap recycling in China which, despite contributing 84Mt to steelmaking in 2012, is still an underutilised resource since EAF steel production accounts for only 10% of steel output – and much of this charges molten or cold pig iron − while BOF oxygen steelmaking charges on average only 7% of scrap, well below most western steelmakers.

Other features on the environment are a report on the final trials of the ULCOS experimental top gas recycling blast furnace, an article on LanzaTech’s fermentation process to convert CO into ethanol and other chemical pre-cursors, methods of reducing energy consumption in electric motors at SAIL’s plants in India and the latest CSP Flex thin slab – rolling lines which provide a 40% energy saving compared with conventional casting and rolling.
The second feature is electric arc steelmaking with a paper from Air Liquide which address operations under non-conventional conditions of liquid metal and/or DRI charging.

Conference reports detail CRU’s recent World Steel gathering in Hong Kong and the Met coke world summit  recently held in Pittsburgh.
 

There are four ‘Updates’ in this issue as the regular USA, Latin American and Chinese columns are supplemented by ‘Japan Update’ which appears four times a year.

As usual, News Statistics and Events occupy the first four pages of the issue.

The regular History feature reviews a remarkable DVD recently released by the British Film Institute which contains 20 archive films covering UK steelmaking dating from 1901 to 1987.