It doesn't gum up the burners in some of our major operations. Oil injection in blast furnaces has dropped by at least 75 percent. The blast-furnace process consumes 79 percent of the energy required at integrated steel mills, Fruehan says. Reheat furnaces also consume a lot of energy, but not nearly as much as blast furnaces do. The industry also is recycling more internally generated gases from blast furnaces, coke ovens, and co-generation plants.
Companies buy fuel on long-term contracts and through hedging.
This insulates them somewhat from volatile price swings. The specialty steelmaker is saving 25-30 percent in shipping costs per pound of steel by using the new system, which has been in place since February. CarTech increasingly is using the dedicated carriers for conversion work. Lifting a coil of steel is standard practice, but CarTech ships long products. Common carriers tend to damage bar products with more specialized finishes such as nickel.