Status and prospects of out-of-furnace treatments of steel in Russia

Modern steelmaking practice requires treatment of the steel outside the furnace, and the results obtained from such treatment determine many of the economic and qualitative indices of the finished metal products. Forty three ladle-furnace units (LFU) have been introduced in Russia since 1991, these units having an aggregate capacity of roughly 30 million tons of steel a year. The number of ladle-furnace units operating in Russia is expected to increase in the future. Equipping open-hearth (OH) furnaces with an LFU not only improves the quality of the steels and increases the number of grades that can be made, but it also reduces product costs as a whole. An increasing number of two-stand LFU have recently been introduced, these units providing for electric-arc heating, top-blowing of the melt through a lance, and the injection of powdered materials into the steel. The demand for vacuum-degassed steel in Russia is slightly more than 21 million tons, but existing production facilities can supply only 16–17 million tons of this amount, i.e., there is a shortage of vacuum-degassing equipment in Russia.