Energy Conservation Efforts at Inland Steel Company

Energy conservation is an extremely important issue for Inland Steel. With a total energy bill that averages over 1.4 million dollars a day, any small improvement will yield a significant savings. There were 68 separate projects implemented last year with a total savings of over 39 million dollars. This paper highlights a few of the more significant projects of the past and proposed future conservation efforts. Past projects include: Controlling Blast Furnace Stove Heating through Combustion Modeling, Hot Mill Slab Reheat Furnace Control, and Recovering Energy with a Blast Furnace Expander Turbine. The more promising future projects are: to develop a soaking pit simulation model, and implementing a Lysaght model for annealing furnaces.