Danieli orders tie into EAF boom

Italy-based Danieli & C. S.p.A. has signed new orders and completed installations recently that point to bustling global activity in the scrap-fed electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking sector.

In April, Danieli said the Liberty Steel business unit of the United Kingdom-based GFG Alliance had placed an order for a Danieli Digimelter to melt scrap and direct-reduced iron (DRI) at Liberty’s Whyalla Works in Australia.

The order helps solidify the likelihood that GFG will embark on its blast furnace-to-EAF conversion project at Whyalla that has been on again/off again for several years.

Danieli says the Digimelter purchased by Liberty Steel is a “zero bucket” type. “It is an endless continuous-scrap charging and preheating system that provides optimal scrap charge, reducing energy consumption and minimizing the environmental footprint through better energy exploitation and consistent production rate improvement,” according to the firm.

Danieli says the new Digimelter is expected to start melting by the middle of 2025.

The Italian technology and equipment firm says Liberty had previously ordered two Danieli Digimelters for installation at its Ostrava steelmaking complex in the Czech Republic, which Danieli calls the first European plant converting from blast furnace to EAF production.

In North America, Danieli says Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario-based Algoma Steel Inc. is in the process of installing a Danieli Digimelter-based new green steel shop with design capacity of 3.7 million tons.

While that blast furnace-to-EAF conversion project is underway, as part of it Danieli recently shipped to Canada melt shop cranes and a Q-SYM2 automated scrap yard, featuring automatic cranes, scrap visual-recognition and automatic scrap sorting and charging equipment.

“Three members of Algoma Steel’s engineering team recently traveled to Danieli Thailand to conduct extensive factory acceptance testing on the cranes before shipping [them] to Canada," Danieli says.

Danieli says four additional fully automated cranes are being built for the Algoma scrap yard, and one has been inspected. The cranes will be equipped with scanning technology Danieli says makes it possible to check “for any undesirable type of material within the scrap before the transfer into the scrap bucket.”

Algoma indicated in February that startup of its EAF conversion project is expected to occur in mid-2024.