Steel work operators face a plenty of challenges in a dynamic market, where even short and mid term fluctuations show their impact in a dramatic way. Hence unfortunately, long term considerations seem to be neglected, although especially in the raw material sector radical changes are inevitable. Resource depletion is not leading to a price increase only; non renewable raw materials along with a rising demand create a supply bottleneck. This is expected for coking coal, as well as for natural gas, where the industry is forced to give off more of its shares for public demands like power generation, fertilizer production and/or heating purposes. On the other hand, environmental care, which is by far not only the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, becomes an important economical driving factor as well. More enforced environmental restrictions by law causes operators to revise their production routes to sort out processes which are not complying with these regulations. Answers to these scenarios give the established COREX technology and the new COREX“Low Coal” and the COREX/FINEX “(L)ow (R)educed (I)ron” concepts. Both concepts lead to fuel savings for hot metal production, either by direct savings in the COREX process or indirectly by supporting the traditional blast furnace route. By fulfilling the criteria, utilization of low cost/high available raw materials, overall fuel savings even for the blast furnace and the impressive ecological advantages, once again the COREX/FINEX technology approves itself as a recommendable alternative to the blast furnace and/or a reasonable expansion/substitution of existing production routes. Focus of this presentation is laid on latest operation results of the operating plants in China, South Africa, India and Korea, new technological developments like the “Low Coal” and “LRI” concepts and a Life Cycle Assessment of the COREX/FINEX processes.
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