Webinar: Electric smelting furnace design and operation - Lessons learned and important next steps

Join the Metallurgical Society for their webinar: Electric smelting furnace design and operation - Lessons learned and important next steps.

About this event

The global steel industry faces increasing pressure to decarbonise, with the electric smelting furnace (ESF) playing a crucial role in the transition to green steel production by converting direct-reduced iron (DRI) to pig iron as a replacement for traditional blast furnaces. Ex Mente has been supporting this transition since 2022, collaborating with leading industry players worldwide in their ESF technology development efforts.

This webinar will provide a review of ESF design and operation, drawing upon the experiences and insights gained from these collaborations. The presenter will explore the core DSF process functions, including the heating and melting of DRI pellets, carbon dissolution, FeO reduction, and slag-alloy separation, along with critical constraints for successful operation, such as downstream compatibility and slag utilisation.

This presentation will highlight lessons learned about ESF design, operation, and challenges to expect and avoid. The importance of raw material behaviour, particularly when utilising different iron ore sources like Pilbara iron ore will be discussed. The significance of pilot-plant design and testing to generate relevant data for scaling up to full-scale production and mitigating risks associated with new technology implementation will also be considered. The webinar will outline important next steps for the successful development and deployment of ESF technology for green steel.

The presentation and subsequent discussion will be valuable for anyone involved in or interested in the future of green steelmaking and the role of electric smelting furnace technology.

Webinar time: 7.00pm - 8.00pm AEDT.

Speaker/s

Dr Johan Zietsman

CEO, Ex Mente

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Dr Johan Zietsman has more than 25 years of extractive metallurgy experience, both in industry and academia, as well as software engineering related to extractive metallurgy. He is the founder and CEO of Ex Mente Technologies, a pyrometallurgy consulting and systems development company. In line with his research and development interests, he has an honorary appointment at the University of Pretoria, as Glencore Chair in Pyrometallurgical Modelling, where he guides Master's and Ph.D. students. His interests in extractive metallurgy include pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical processes, thermochemistry, computational modelling, slag freeze linings, and new process technology development. In software engineering, he is involved in design and development of information systems, and software for process modelling, financial modelling, operational enhancement, and advanced process control. He has a Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from the University of Pretoria, and has published several papers at peer-reviewed conferences and refereed journals.