Alfa Acciai

The holding company is working on different energy efficiency projects in its plant in Brescia.
The Smart Grid Pilot is most comprehensive and important one. It is pilot system to recover heat from the offgas cooling system and to transfer energy to the Brescia district heating network. After its conversion into an industrial system, it will enable energy recovery up to 20 MWt. This has a double goal: recover heat that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere and make it available. This represents a perfect example of the symbiotic relationship between the Alfa Acciai industrial facility and the city of Brescia.

Many other projects involve the productive process of the steel mill. Among these, the following are the most important:

• improvement of the management of the scrap used in the charge mix, with variation depending on the steel grade produced and with feedback in relation to the steel analysis;
• optimisation of electrical parameters to make energy transmission more efficient and cooling calibrated to avoid excessive heat;
• closed loop control of the chemical setting and lime to vary the chemical formulation in relation to the real time result of the chemical analysis of the steel;
• increase in steel tapped into the ladle with resulting increase in the productivity of smelting furnaces and the respective energy consumption efficiency;
• system for regulating the flow rate of electrode cooling water to optimise consumption of the actual electrodes;
• continuous casting optimisation to cast with a lower manganese content than in the past.

Last but not least, the P-FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) project has been launched. It includes the thorough analysis of all causes of inefficiencies and stoppages and allows the prompt intervention when needed. 

Acciaierie di Sicilia

In the plant in Catania, which is the only steel mill of the island, different improvements of the production processes allow to cut energy consumption. The action has been focused both on the smelting process, with the optimisation of the scrap mix of the charge, and on the rolling process, with the introduction of a new operational practice at the rolling mill's reheating furnace, whereby billets are loaded more directly, hotter, which led to a significant reduction in the consumption of methane in the furnace itself.

Also the subsidiaries companies downstream the industry, Tecnofil and Ferroberica, began different projects focused on the reduction of energy consumption.

Tecnofil

As a leader among wire drawing mills in Europe, the company has developed projects focused both on the optimization of the productive process and for the improvement of its facilities. In particular, the upgrade of the compressed air production plant by installing latest-generation fixed-capacity and variable flow inverter equipment made it possible to reduce the number of machines installed for the same amount of compressed air produced. Moreover, the enhancement of the process automation with a dedicated software and the revamp of drawing machines, with the replacement of the main motors, resulted in a nearly 70% energy savings.

Ferroberica

Ferroberica, which is among the European leaders in the pre-shaping and assembling of reinforcing steel, succeeded in reducing the consumption, by switching to a cold cutting system that does not require fossil fuel.