EAF Electric Arc Furnace
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- Опубліковано 23 лис 2008
- E.A.F. Melting scrap steel in New Zealand. The arc is about 3000°Celcius and scrap steel is melted in three charges to get around 40 tonnes of steel to be further processed in the ladle furnace.
The rods are from carbon and the arc current varies between 42,000 and 50,000 Ampères at around 300 Volts ac.
Sound is loud, wise to turn your volume down. - Наука та технологія
I used to travel as a journeyman electrician and sometimes I would work on steel mill shut downs and turn arounds. I would always work on the EAF if I could. 40,000 amps at 600 volts supplied to the 30 ft long carbons by water cooled cables as thick as your leg. No matter what job I had, when the turn around was over, and they started the EAF back up I would be there to see it because there is nothing, man made, like it in the world. unreal power. 100,000 pound lid on the pot bounces around just like it was the lid on a pot on your stove top when water boils.
Thanks for the info & figures, as since a EAF came up in my feed 6 months ago & shocked the sh¡t out of me with how frighteningly impressive they are, I've watched plenty since & you're the first to fill me in on how much anps they suck etc! They'd probably use enough power in less than a minute, than what would run a house or small business for a year?! I wonder how on earth to the steel mills pay the electric bill?!
That is an impressive amount of current. In that case I would imagine that the transformer is setup very close by right? Otherwise the cables delivering power themselves would melt away.
Makes me wonder what’s the source voltage on those transformers.
How do you tell when somethings gone terribly wrong when it ALWAYS sounds like something is going terribly wrong?
😁👍
Those who've heard it with their ears in real, they'll never be able to tell of their baby is crying. (Experienced it in Tata Steel)
@@md.aadilakhtar8823 Shit man, wish you all had good ear protection
Because it sounds even wronger? Especially with a broken electrode. Bzzzzz!
@@md.aadilakhtar8823 based
I am currently working at SDI as a journeyman electrician. I see this kind of stuff every day. It is probably the most fascinating job site I have ever been on in 21 years in the trade. Steel mills are very dangerous, and you constantly have to be on alert!
this is the overunity pulse plasma 2 stroke
I had the chance to witness one of these beasts a few years ago. It was one of the most incredible experiences that I'l never forget. You can literally feel the ground shaking and it sounds like dynamite going off. It brings electrical energy to life BIG TIME> Shows you what electrical energy is capable of it the conditions are right.
Great description! Thanks!
Went looking if there are any in my country..
Brother doesn’t the electrode melt too
@@aphroditeson748 it is carbon and slowly will erode away but they are relatively cheap - it won't melt though
I have seen these things in action here in Australia - the second they charge the carbon rods into the steel is something you will never forget - the sound , the vibration in the air - the violence of whats happening is indescribable - An experience i am happy i have had, watching the video does not even come close!! those carbon rods sure do get hammered , could not imagine the power bill !
I love the sound of industry...
There's money to be made...
Bolbi Stragnavowski i agree, just sounds amazing
Bolbi Stragnavowski
Me too
Bolbi Stragnavowski that's such a great comment.
Fuck no that sound horrible
The old man snuck me in as a kid to oregon steel, got to sit up in the control tower for the arc furnace, I will never forget it. Absolutely amazing!
They had r&j sheet metal constantly replacing panels on the building do to the wet charges
Ah you are very lucky to experience that history. Where was/is Oregon steel? I pass by RJ sheet metal all the time, on 99?
Clackamas has a lot of manufacturing. The Community College got a federal grant and built a huge Industrial Sciences bldg.
@rvgrouik Power is taken from the 110kV grid, stepped down to 33kV.
The furnace transformer runs at 33 kV at 600 to 800 Amps and steps it down to 300 V AC at about 50 kA for the electrodes.
The electrodes are about 80 cm in diameter.
Agreed, the humming sound and the building almost shaking is a very powerfull experience.
I worked at IPSCO in Regina, SK when a large propane tank got into the scrap metal and accidentally dropped into the melting pot. When it exploded, it snapped all three electrodes right off. Damn scary. Amazing no one got hurt.
I worked in JSW integrated steel plant in India and during our training/induction, we were taken on a tour to all the shops, i.e. Cold and hot mills, steel melting shops, RMS, etc. But when I witnessed the arc furnace start up, I quickly concluded that was the most incredible audio visual experience I've ever had. This video cant even describe the sound that I heard. It really makes you feel how much power electricity has(in my case it was operating on 33kVs)
I dunno why but the sound of electricity arcing like that kind of scares me, probably because I know the massive power there
Yeah I Agree
Had the same feeling
Just a stick welding electrode, stepped up say, about 1,000x in scale.
It's like thunder at first.
@@oron61 best sound. U want to hear
I used to work on a 155 Ton arc furnace at Corus Stocksbridge.
This video brings back some great memories from that time and the people I worked with.
Thanks for uploading this.
@@500Rufus
You must be so proud.... Shame Rotherham couldn't make special steels or use a rolling mill....
@@500Rufus
Half of the Stocksbridge men are still there on the furnaces...... Tell me David.... How is the rolling going on at Rotherham???.
@@500Rufus
And while we're on it... How is the remelt at Rotherham going??.
Until the Stocksbridge men came down Rotherham was nothing better than Scunthorpe... Clog iron makers 😊😊.
Good night.
A sight to behold. A true thing of beauty! Wow, would love to experience it in person! Awesome!!!
I worked maintaining direct arc furnaces and related machinery for 8 years and the noise is loud enough to make your whole body cavity resonate!
Man, I work in a steel forming factory, and my foreman was telling me to look this up. I'd like to see this in person one day. That's fucking insane how much power are in those electrodes. There's alot of blood sweat and tears that go into steel. One of those things I use to never even think about until I started making steel products.
I love the hum too. as you said, for first timers it is an eye and ear opener allright.
Also the vibrations, especially when striking the start arc when the rods go down, in the steel
It is arcing during the whole operation, as the arc creates the heat to melt the steel.
The carbon rod initially touches the steel and gets pulled back a little to trigger the arc.
Fascinating and terrifying at the same time
The sound of Creation!!!
Yes they have. Explosions are very common when wet scrap steel is dumped in at the second or third charge.
Extra shutters are dropped in front of the control room double glazed view windows.
The real technical hell; simply amazing; well done !
I ran these furnaces for 3 years. People just cant imagine the sound!!!!!!!!
You are correct. The arc furnace does the raw melting of the scrap steel. The laydle furnace does the actual grading of the steel with the additives as mentioned by kwalters2583
Those three white hot looking pole things with the liquid running down them are actually giant electrodes. The pump huge amounts of electricity through them and when they lower they create an arc with the bottom of the reactor vessel (IIRC) which has all the scrap material to be smelted. The sheer energy in it flash melts the scrap into sweet sweet molten steel.
Mmm sweet sweet molten steel, I can just taste it now 😋
I went to a local industrial museum where they showed us a (recreated) example of how Electric Arc Furnaces work, using a decommisioned furnace. The museum building used to have six furnaces. I said at the time that any building with six of these monsters, all operating, must be like a vision from hell :D.
Nothing like that, just direct short arcing across the secondary delta of the transformer. CT's sense the current drawn. When the arcs are struck a hydraulic lifting mechanism keeps the arcs at a constant lengths. When a good arc is struck the current settles at a steady level.
Amazing footage, incredible to watch.
Holy hell that's ferocious when those arcs first go.
you know your arc furnace is working, when it looks like its about to blow up.
Good video. The EAF I work on charges 3 baskets of scrap, 165 - 170 tonnes in total into the funace which carries a liquid hot heel of approx 20-25 tones. We tap out 145 - 150 tonnes of molten steel every 44 - 46 mins. Bloody expensive thing to run...
I can't even begin to fathom how people figured out how to do this. I imagine it must be a really long series of trial and error steps from something really primitive to what we see here. It blows my mind.
Engineers go off of charts and calculate all of this including the materials needed. When you break it all down to maths and material science + scale its relatively straightforward.
Even the 1000 ton lid can't contain the hell that happens inside
Correct, They loaded the second charge of scrap steel and had problems closing the roof of the furnace, bits of iron sticking out.
I work as electrcian-contractor on the high voltage side and do maintenance on the OCB's and power transformers
Magnificent is the operation of electric arc furnace which I heard before.
Impressive indeed!
i have a question. on a lot of arc furnace videos i've seen the power cables that supply the electrodes shake a lot. is that due to the magnetic fields they produce from carrying so much power or just the mechanical motions of the equipment?
Both, the magnetic fields are extremely strong. Also the carbon rods move up and down to maintain the correct arc distance.
cool thanks.
Rinoa Super-Genius Watch welding lead lines. They'll do the same thing.
more the 2nd than the 1st.
The cables probably also heat and coil thereby expanding and contracting causing movement.
12.6MW to 15MW of pure beauty.
They are being lowered to get the best arc to melt the steel. The electrodes last about 12 hours.
New electrodes are screwed into the top of the used ones so a continuous electrode rod can be maintained and no electrodes are wasted.
Crane Hook Photobomb! Always sneaking into EAF videos...
I would love to have a tour of this place.WOW!
Ya, probably better when the EAF’s not active..
Oh, this is too COOL!!😍😍What a neat machine!
42k-50k amperes...damn. With that kind of current, you wouldn't so much "die". It'd be more like "pop like an overfilled balloon as your bodily fluids are explosively converted to gas in about a twentieth of a second."
"popcorn" comes to mind
Ironically enough it's only 300v so it wouldn't be much more violent than a shock from mains.
This thing seems just like a arc welder, except scaled up by a factor of maybe 100 million. The Devil's stick welder! :-)
I want one in my backyard!!!
a little less heavy of course;-)
this is an awesome way to smelt steel!
Hi 👋 beautiful memories thanks sounds better at 5-15 am Monday mornings
H
imagine the electric bill
Very Sticky Welds i will be 1mile long
A friend of mine worked in a place with a huge arc furnace. Said they used more electricity than the city of Pittsburgh
Mr Smith Wouldn't have been in Illinois would it?
When Northwestern ran at full crank it consumed the output of about 1/2 of one of the Nuclear Reactors at Byron IL.
@@Hiei2k7 no this was in East Ohio.
Very Sticky Welds some industrial facilities have there own power plant, or some kind of power grid inverter thingy amping shit up.
That's how terminators are made, kids.
@PilotMikie That is water cooled exhaust pipe.
Thank you again - although 11 years later😃
It is fascinating to watch. great recycling.
It sounds like the record for most firework rockets set off at once!
big river steel in arkansas uses a direct 500kv tie to power it, think about that
Wooow, I watched this video 11 years ago, today thought about it again and here it comes!😃 As powerful as always!😁👍
The furnace is now a piece of history, plant shut down in favor of Chinese made products.
@@RODALCO2007 What a shame... In Europe many steel plants are still operating - often purchased by bigger companies like Arcelor Mittal or Thyssen Krupp - but who knows what will be in the future..
Thank you so much, kind greetings!
@lexichronicle2 Cooling water, which flows to cool the power cables to the electrodes. It also cools the clamps holding the elctrodes.
That is large conduit that leads to the "bag house", basically a big vacuum cleaner system that collect the dust for recycling. Without it, a lot of heavy metal laden smoke would be emitted in to the atmosphere.
The glowing part is very near or in the furnace crucible hence they are exposed top a lot of heat and glow.
The electrodes are from carbon, when they run near the end a new electrode is screwed onto the old one so a continuous rod is obtained.
Water flows over the electrodes and aids in cooling the clamps which grip the electrodes.
As a welder I can play around with something similar as seen in this video but in a drastically reduced scale with a 1/4" rod using approximately 300 amps. Lots of fun and noise though. It's called gauging and it's mostly used to remove welds and beveling.
I worked 45yr, as a first helper at the electric furnace I love d it
Guillermo asked how they limit the current. As Rodal said, the arc rods are lifted in and out to keep as near constant current as possible, but when going into a load of raw scrap, short circuit currents are limited by the impedance of an over-winding or choke on the mains transformer.
In my day, post WW2, the noise and fireworks were spectacularly enhanced by melting bomb and shell cases from which not all, or indeed, none of the explosive had been removed.
Wouldn't an artillery shell blow up the ladle?
I remember working along side of these bad boys back in my ironworker days during a scheduled maintainence shutdown and how loud there were. I recall a rookie steelworker charging one of the furnaces with wet steel and when they started to melt the steel a large fireball shot out and over the firewall I was standing behind. The heat was ridiculously intense and made my hardhat damn near melt. Good times I guess lol
In the early 80s, I worked in a forge that made train wheels, CSW (Canadian Steel Wheel) in Montreal.
There were two electric arc furnaces each producing 90 tons of molten steel.
The two furnaces worked alternately to supply the forge's needs for steel ingots.
The noise was insane despite our hearing protectors, but so was the spectacle offered by these mega machines.
The forge's 7 hydraulic presses then took over to shape the reddened steel ingots into the shape of a train wheel.
Imagine flattening a block of steel 2 feet in diameter by two feet high, just as easily as you would flatten a ball of ground beef into a hamburger patty.
Finally, the forged wheel went through various machining steps to give it the required dimensions.
It is a fascinating process to see in real life. The sound is unbelieveable probably 140 dB + Thanks for your comment.
Damn that looks violent! And I bet it an EMC nightmare around that thing!
20 miles from our home sdi has an eaf. Close enough, thank you.
Impressive HT !
@ramjetrabbit - The EAF is a relatively cheap and fast way to turn scrap metal into rebar or light structural steel.
There is typically a 110 kV line from the power plant to the switchyard at the mill, where a step-down transformer takes it to 34 kV for local transmission. The biggest tie coming off the substation is the lead to the primary side of the EAF transformer, which steps the voltage back up so that an arc can be struck.
I love electrical power in its rawest form!!
@chemech Hey, thanks a bunch for your EAF-related answers. It explained alot. Sounds like you either have in the past, or do now, work in a foundry with a EAF. The USA has exported way TOOOO much of its industry. Wow! Heavy! It must be pretty scary at first. But like other things, you become accustomed to it. But have to always be aware of the awesome power, and certain dangers associated with this line of work. Thanks again.
The hum of mega Amps and the heat...exciting things electric arcs.
@ramjetrabbit - The electric bill is on the order of 400 kWh/ton, and a typical EAF melts about 100 tons per heat, and about 24 heats per day when the economy is healthy - 10 to 16 if they shut down afternoons.
Google on EAF Steelmaking for more info.
The ladles are lined with firebrick or castable refractories - not quite as sophisticated as the space shuttle's tiles...
amazing video !
if you wanna see one ov these up close go to magna sheffield, theres other things earth wind water fire-tornado eletric rooms great day out!! just found it by mistake, the arc is not runin for ov reasons but they put on a show with fire and sound to give u an idea what it were like. and the place is MASSIVE and they left the place alone apart from walk ways so what you see below you are actul items they used and how it looked, dark dirty massive machines fun for all ages!!
@adubulson This is a 40 MW furnace for scrap steel
What size is your furnace?
In SA they have these furnaces up to 500MW at 900 V dc
It is quite spectacular allright to watch
some people on forums explain that when powering equipment, 'high amperage' is ok , voltage is important bit..
then when someone says "even if your power supply has 10,000 amps it's good to go" i just see this in my head at the first short xD
Rip my old exhaut fan.. getting hammered by that furnace
Thanks for that info. I check where ours come from.
great video
WORKED AT THE TIMKEN CO.MELT SHOP AND REPUBLIC STEEL MELT SHOP.AWESOME PLACES TO WORK!!!!!!!!
The chiming sound is most likely the alarm for the overheard crane setting down the charge bucket. The liquid falling down the electrode is simply water to keep them cool.
I work in Law Enforcement and this job makes mine look like a tea party.
Grizz my old career of timber faller eats law enforcement for lunch statistically speaking.
DC, love to know what sound that makes.
Direct Iron ore Reduction also can provide good "feed" and Australia is well positioned for that - we just need to turn around and turn the flood for that.
@justinmert I don't work there anymore as I changed jobs, still got some footage which i will post when I find the video tapes.
@MrPetarmk Haven't got a video of that, I also don't work here anymore as I have another job now.
The electrodes are screwed into each other.
Wow...that's gnarly.
Great Video!! Thanks!
Damn...that's cool and impressive :).
@lexichronicle2 Used to be a third hand on one of these at British Steel Grange town. 66,000 volts 22,000 going to each trode melting about a ton of steel a minuet. fearfully noisy bits of kit,I used to be a third hand on the C furnace was on the plant when the door cooler burst during an electrode change this blew the roof off the furnace and two men were seriously injured.My mother heard the explosion 5 miles away. This video is just as I remember it.
Cheers Mick.
My grandpa said when he worked in the mill, he used these and holy crap were they loud. More like D.E.A.F furnace.
From 20 feet away it's like a shotgun right next to you every time an arc strikes. Wear ear protection and still loud as shit. Don't even try to talk to anyone, it's only lip reading and hand signals.
@@AlexA-zb6gg ik
@Loeke77 That is the watercooled exhaustpipe
Rodalco, what system is used to regulate the voltage and current at this scale?, racks of SCRs?, high current vacuum tubes?
@campo4321 - the water-cooled shell of an EAF is typically made from Schedule 80 (Xtra Strong) stainless steel pipe
Yes, they last for about 12 to 18 hours
Our employee of the month. This inanimate carbon rod!
@paulbagz1 Yes, about 2 ½ years ago.
holy crap that was crazy!
I worked at the Duquesne works in the electric furnace dept. 1979_1984 worked in all Dept's. Via labor gang but I especially liked being third helper on the furnaces we had 5 a Blast from the PAST..
I too am curious about that pipe like object at 2:28. I've seen that in other various EAF videos too. From the looks it's got something hot inside of it too. What exactly is that?
@HugMyNutz Many mills now require double hearing protection for work around the EAF - ear muffs over ear plugs
I know i'm supposed to add to the conversation with intelligent, and interesting thoughts But all i can say is HOLY FUCK.
@stdavross666 It is consumed slowly and the carbon will become part of the melting process.
The electrodes last about 18 hours