Heiner Guschall

Founder and CEO of SICON Germany

Abstract: Crafted Scrap - Advanced Technology for High Quality Green Steel Production

Introducing ‘crafted scrap’—how steel producers can increase scrap use, decrease CO₂ emissions, and increase energy efficiency while consistently producing high-quality steel. Crafted scrap is a meltshop-controlled scrap preparation system combining hardware and software solutions consisting of E&A and mechanical elements, allowing for the ideal scrap mix and setting the new standard for scrap sorting, cleaning, and preparation for steel producers. Currently, scrap deliveries contain large amounts of impurities and contaminants, which increase the creation of slag, reduce energy efficiency, and affect the production of high-quality steel. Steel producers are forced to compensate for the contaminants in scrap through virgin materials to reach their goals for specific steel grades. Additionally, scrap charging, dependent on human sight and experience with limited support from automation systems, is common practice in the steel industry.

Combine these challenges with the global climate crisis and demand on the steel industry to reduce CO₂ emissions, the time for steel producers to be able to rely on scrap and its automated handling to produce high-quality steel is now. In this presentation, SICON and Primetals Technologies present their work to create a digital scrap yard and how finding synergies between the technologies both partners provide leads to crafted scrap, allowing for high-quality steel production and transparent scrap use.

Biography:

Heiner Guschall is the CEO and founder of SICON Germany and is responsible for sales activities and research and development at SICON, which uses an important portion of its annual investments to remain a leading company in the industry with regular beneficial innovations.

As the inventor of numerous processes protected by patents—including the VW-SICON process—Guschall made significant contributions towards the recovery of shredder residue since 1997/98. Plants based on SICON’s inventions are nowadays located in many countries worldwide. SICON was founded in 1997 and since then has focused on the development and implementation of solutions for the processing and cleaning of scrap and metals.

SICON’s goal is to improve the profitability of the scrap utilization in the steel plant and the shredder process through innovative process improvements that improve meltshop efficiency.