The first task boils down to employing subsystems that eliminate interruptions in furnace operation. Another way to ensure continuous furnace operation is to employ ladle metallurgical techniques. Transferring a portion of a melt to a separate alloy mixing process permits continued production in the main furnace and production of additional batches of specific alloy steels in separate ladles. Minimizing furnace idle time helps to maintain peak, or near peak, production rates. However, more heats per day are needed to increase productivity.
More heats means the furnace energy input rate needs to be increased.
Inputting more energy to an electric furnace imposes certain demands on production processes. The first two points are wide-reaching production topics and exceed the scope of this article. The chemical energy mentioned in point three comes from increasing carbon units in the furnace charge mix, by injecting additional O 2 into the bath, and using oxy-fuel and natural gas burners in the furnace sidewalls, bottom and roof. Exploiting this chemical energy increases the volume of gases and fumes generated and raises the temperature of the gases drawn from the furnace DEC system. DEC, or fourth hole gases, typically contain 30 to 40 times more furnace fumes than gases from secondary sites.