New special steel plant in Kapfenberg: utilize waste heat, protect the environment!

voestalpine BÖHLER Edelstahl GmbH & Co KG is already thinking about tomorrow. Construction of the world’s most advanced special steel plant included a new system for recovering heat and utilizing waste heat in order to reduce CO2 emissions.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the world’s most advanced special steel plant was held in 2018. From as early as 2021, the plant will produce around 205,000 tons of ultra high-quality special steels each year. This will not only ensure the Group’s technological leadership, but also set new standards in optimizing emissions as well as energy & resource efficiency.

Heat recovery and waste heat as sources of energy

The new design involves installing heat recovery systems on the vacuum AOD converter and electric arc furnace—the technological heart of the plant—which are both located in the melting area. After cooling the exhaust gas pipe, the energy content of the water can then be used to generate up to 12.5 MW of heat. This is achieved by temporarily storing the water in a storage tank before directing it over heat exchangers which extract the heat and feed it into the plant’s own heating network via its boiler room.

Saving 4,000 tons of CO₂ emissions each year

This new process generates even more heat than the new special steel plant itself needs. Feeding around 20,000 MWh of this surplus heat into the public heating network allows the municipality of Kapfenberg to reduce its natural gas consumption, resulting in an annual CO₂ reduction of more than 4,000 tons.