Low-CO2 steel grades for Universal

The first low-CO₂ strip plates produced by Salzgitter Flachstahl have been delivered to the trading company Universal Eisen und Stahl GmbH.  This makes Universal the first trading company in the Salzgitter Group to have green steel that can be offered to traders and consumers.

Universal wants to offer its customers a product that can already make a contribution to reducing their CO₂ footprint.     
Universal has decided to initially include grade S355MC in its product range, as it is a higher strength thermomechanical material suitable for cold forming and is ideally suited for a wide range of applications.
In the automotive industry, but also in many other industries, such as the production of structural tubes, frame structures, cold pressed parts as well as cold formed profiles.  
In a first step, S355MC will be introduced in a thickness range of 3 to 20 mm, but a continuous expansion of the range of dimensions and grades for low-CO₂ steel is the declared aim.

Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH supplies green flat steel products with a CO₂ footprint reduced by more than 66%. This has been verified and validated by TÜV SÜD based on 2018 data for the various process routes used to produce flat steel.

The low-CO₂ steel grades are produced at the Peine electric steel plant in combination with Salzgitter Flachstahl's rolling mills. The existing casting equipment allows slabs to be produced in thicknesses of 250 mm and in widths of 800-1100 mm. This makes it possible to produce hot-rolled strip with widths of 850-1080 mm. In order to enter into environmentally friendly low-CO₂ steel production based on slabs from Peine, a selection of grades has been worked out between Peiner Träger and Salzgitter Flachstahl, with which a selected segment of flat steel production can already be served.

How is the lowered CO₂ footprint achieved?
The steel production process used at Peiner Träger GmbH (PTG) in Peine via the electric arc furnace has the advantage over the blast furnace blowing steel mill route traditionally used in Salzgitter that the feedstock used for slab production consists of 100% steel scrap. By using the electric arc route, the amount of CO₂ produced for the manufacture of the slab can be reduced to around a quarter compared with the blast furnace route.

In the future, hydrogen and electricity from regenerative sources can completely replace the carbon previously required for steel production and thus reduce CO₂ emissions in steel production by over 95 percent.
Salzgitter AG is working towards this ambitious goal with its transformation program SAlzgitter Low CO₂-Steelmaking (SALCOS), whose central elements are electricity from renewable sources and hydrogen. Together, the two are intended to replace the coal currently used in the conventional blast furnace process.