The electric arc furnace process made an unbelievable advance in its crude steel ratio in this ten years after the oil crisis. Through its history of 85 years, many improvements have been accumulated on the refining methods, operation practice and furnace productivity. This paper describes the progress of technical development to the highly grown present level of 80min/Tap-Tap or 400kWh/t.
The remarkable achievements in recent years are attributed to the oxygen enrichment melting, carbon injection and steelmaking combined to secondary refinings. A new combined steelmaking line (EAF-LF-RH-CC) is now adopted by many domestic steelplants to establish the position of the main steelmaking process for high grade steels.
