Served as an essential and indispensable equipment in steel industry, EAF(Electric arc furnace) has unquestionably become the propellent of technical progress in the steelmaking sector. When look back, we can clearly see several key turning points that EAF have come through.
As we all know, EAF is a furnace that heats charged material by means of an electric arc. In 1900, a French scientist named Paul Héroult developed the first successful commercial EAF, which opened the way toward steel plants’ further development. Furthermore, this great scientist also invented electrolytic aluminum process which has been using in luminium industry.
American Doctor W.E. Schwabe proposed to equip EAF with large capacity transformer. After several generations’ struggle, the output of EAF steelmaking has been dramatically enhanced.
In the 1970s, a steel company in Japan firstly started to melt and refine in two furnaces respectively, from then ladle refining furnace process began popularizing. Comparing with EAF, LRF creates less consumption of graphite electrode with same power.
Since the 1980s, steel products have been widely used in all kinds of industries and steel production capacity has thus greatly increased. Many steel enterprises are positively exploring high-efficiency and security process. With better performance than ACEAF, DCEAF entered a quick development phase.
Currently, the Max. capacity of DCEAF is 420t achieved by a company in Italy. Meanwhile, with progress of automating technology, steel production will be more and more clean and eco-friendly.
