Energy Efficiency Best Practice Label for Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH

Yet another award from dena - this time for crude steel production
 
Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH (SZFG), a subsidiary of Salzgitter AG, has now been awarded dena's Energy Efficiency Best Practice Label for its energy-efficient crude steel production. Back in the fall of 2013, SZFG had already won first prize of the Energy Efficiency Awards conferred by Deutsche Energieagentur (dena).
 
The pig iron produced in the blast furnace is processed into crude steel in the steelworks, which creates huge volumes of process gas. The label specifically acknowledges the optimized extraction of converter gas in the steelworks achieved by renewal of the Converter A vessels and an optimized control concept, coupled with more intensive internal monitoring.
 
"We place great emphasis on energy efficiency as a corporate goal. The use of energy in line with requirements and the obtaining of process gases that can be harnessed in our own power plant have therefore been assigned a very high priority at Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH", explained Ulrich Grethe, Chairman of SZFG's Management Board. "Planned statutory requirements must not be allowed to get in the way of this useful form of energy recuperation."
 
The measures enable approximately 15 GWh of additional energy to be recovered, enough for heating 7,500 households. Further process gases from other SZFG operations are used in the company's own power plant to produce electricity and process steam for its integrated steelworks. The sum total of power generated would be sufficient to supply a large city such as Braunschweig.
 
The award that is already the second of its kind, following on from the 2014 label for Energy Efficient Crude Steel Production, delivers renewed confirmation of SZFG's activities as part of the project EnergyEfficiency. "There are plans for SZFG to compete for the Best Practice Label in 2016 as well", said Ralph Schaper, head of Energy Management and in charge of the project EnergyEfficiency . "We will then be focusing another downstream processes forming part of steel processing. Our intention is to systematically benchmark the entire process of our integrated steelworks against dena's Energy Efficiency label."