Hyundai Steel Makes 210mm Slabs From Electric Furnaces
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
Hyundai Steel has succeeded in producing 210 millimeter-thick slabs, which are usually made in blast furnaces, using its electric furnaces, according to the company officials Monday.
Hyundai Steel became the world’s second steel maker following Tokyo Steel to make the slabs in this manner. Different from blast furnaces, electric arc furnaces use a system that heats charged material by means of an electric arc.
Steel slabs are relatively bulky plates made out of crude steel from blast or electric furnaces. Slabs, whose thickness ranges from 50 to 350 millimeters, are pressed into thin steel sheets for automobile and other uses.
While blast furnaces fuse iron ore, electric furnaces melt scrap iron into crude steel, which consequently contains relatively high degrees of impurity. It had been believed to be quite difficult to produce slabs of more than 200-millimeter thickness without blast furnaces, according to industry sources.
Hyundai Steel, which has only electric arc furnaces, has so far manufactured relatively thin slabs of about 55 millimeters. So the company had bought about 2 million tons of 210mm slabs from POSCO or CVRD of Brazil annually.
However, the latest technology, developed by Nucor Steel of the United States, allows the steel maker to produce thick slabs using the electric furnaces while maintaining high quality.
Tokyo Steel, which also specialized in electric furnaces, recently started to manufacture the 210mm slabs to supply to Japanese carmaker Toyota.
Hyundai Steel started to catch up with the technology about six months ago and now has facilities for mass production in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province.
With the construction of blast furnaces scheduled for 2010, the company also needed to stabilize its technique for the production of steel slabs of various thickness, according to the company officials.
``We expect to produce various kinds of steel slabs with the technology,’’ one of the sources said. ``We also hope we could amass data in the coming couple of years for blast furnaces and apply them to our fully integrated steel mill when it is completed in 2010.’’
Hyunda Steel officials also said that it plans to invite researchers of Hyundai Hysco and Hyundai Motor to advance the steel-making technology further.