Our REBOX® oxy-fuel solutions have been successfully deployed by around 110 reheat and annealing furnaces across the steel industry worldwide.
Using pure oxygen instead of air for combustion greatly increases combustion efficiency and heat transfer, saving significant volumes of energy.
The potential savings of this technology become clear when you consider that around 1.2 billion tonnes of steel are melted worldwide every year and that each one of those tonnes passes through a furnace twice before it is fashioned into the final product.
REBOX® oxy-fuel solutions consume around 15 percent less energy.
Conventional combustion processes using ambient air require at least 1.3 gigajoules to heat one tonne of steel to the temperature required for rolling. REBOX® oxy-fuel solutions require around 15 percent less energy, even after taking into account of the energy required to produce the oxygen.
Potential savings are actually much higher, reaching somewhere between 40 and 70 percent in some instances as only a fraction of furnaces apply the best ambient air technologies currently available.
In 2007, for example, we converted a furnace from air to oxy-fuel for our customer ArcelorMittal in Shelby, Ohio. This simple solution increased heating power by 25 percent, cut energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 65 percent and cut nitrogen emissions significantly.
Plants already equipped with REBOX® save more than 1,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) each year. This is enough to power 200,000 average households for an entire year, according to the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).
At a glance |
| Name: | Oxy-fuel |
| Country: | Global, example: Shelby, Ohio, US |
| Segment: | Steel industry |
| More information: | REBOX® |
