⚡ Driving the future of low-carbon steelmaking ⚡
We have installed a new 7-tonne Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) in our Green Steel Centre in Teesside, UK — strengthening our capability to develop and demonstrate next-generation sustainable steel technologies.
As the global steel industry accelerates towards lower-emission production, pilot-scale EAF facilities are becoming critical for testing and validating innovative processes before deployment at full industrial scale.
The furnace will support:
✅ Industrial-scale electric steelmaking trials
✅ Scrap utilisation optimisation
✅ Specialist steel alloy development
✅ Machine learning integration
✅ Testing of emerging green steel technologies
This investment provides steel producers, technology developers, researchers, and academic partners with a world-class environment to collaborate, innovate, and accelerate decarbonisation across the steel value chain.
Supported by £2.9m funding from Innovate UK through the Foundation Industry Sustainability Consortium (FISC) EconoMISER programme.
More details here - https://lnkd.in/erSbTcGW
Video link – https://lnkd.in/ezeA8Pcf#GreenSteel#Steelmaking#Decarbonisation#Sustainability#Innovation#Manufacturing#LowCarbon#ElectricArcFurnace#MaterialsProcessingInstitute#UKIndustry#NetZero#IndustrialInnovation#MachineLearning#Recycling#FutureOfSteel
Oke, just the first. Commercial melt on our seven ton electric arc furnace, but was a few features on furnace I'd like to point out to you. The 1st and principal reason why we actually bought the furnace is for use of this jet box. This jet box will allow us to inject oxygen and carbon simultaneously while we have the power on. The carbon and oxygen will mix in the slack and create a foaming slide. This is really important for the next generation of steels and slags and part of a research which is required to produce low nitrogen steels in electric arc furnaces. The jet box. Is also equipped with a natural gas burner which will allow us to Preheat strap within the furnace and hence reduce our melt out times as well. Hence also when saving electrical power, we won't just have electrical heating from electrodes, we also have chemical heating as well. Now when this new furnace. Some of the other features like to point out to you. Is the new slag door. The new slide door. Is hydraulically driven. And interestingly, it doesn't have any refractory on the actual door itself. It is just as water cooled steel plate. However, this new design of door allows us greater access to and. Have a look at the arcs actually actually happening then and have a look at how foaming slag is occurring within the furnace when we're using the jet box. The news New facility It's a larger door, more vertically than horizontal, which then gives a greater field of vision. On the right we have the carbon feed hopper for the jet box. It's very simple to use really in terms of actually adding carbon into the Melbourne required. On the left. This is our new material feed Hopper then. Is constructed so that it can it's capable of charging HB I DRI. Iron units or composite materials are a bit like these then. In through the 4th port, which goes directly in between all three electrodes from the furnace roof into the hottest part of the furnace. The work we do here on plant is supported by the metallurgical labs and the state-of-the-art equipment available to us here at the Institute. We can undertake metal analysis and slag analysis which are live to allow us to undertake modifications to both the metal and the slight of way through our melting program. I'm Doctor William Knapp, the Chief science Officer of Cocoon. Today at the MPI, we are testing some prototype technology which we are hoping to integrate into our pilot plant in the Southern US. We use the MPI for testing our technology because they have world class facilities like the seven ton electric arc furnace behind me, which allows us to test our technology at the medium scale. So there's small scale technology testing and also obviously large scale technology testing such as that on a live steel plant it's very difficult to find facilities where you can test at the tone scale. So subject our equipment to long durations of. Molten metal activities at that kind of medium scale, and the MPI is perfect for that level of prototyping. This new furnace will allow the Institute to undertake the development of new steels and slags which will be required within the steel industry in this country and around the world.
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