L&L Special Furnace designed and built a heated-oil quench tank that will be used by a company for quenching various styles of heat-treated tools used in the forging industry. The tools are heat treated in a furnace to required hardness and then quenched in oil to set hardness. The quench tank holds 65 gallons of oil and is ideal for quenching parts 50-75 pounds. The quench-tank oil is agitated by an impeller with an explosion-proof motor and is heated with a 4.5-kW immersion heater to maintain the oil at a slightly elevated temperature to help eliminate oil flashing and fire potential. There is also a safety lid with fusible links that closes automatically if the fusible links melt, dropping the lid and blocking exposure of the surface of the oil to air to prevent a potential fire.

Nucor Steel Berkeley, a sheet-mill division of Nucor, placed an order with Primetals Technologies for an automotive-grade continuous galvanizing line that will be installed at its facility in Huger, S.C. With an annual capacity of approximately 500,000 tons, the line will increase the company’s galvanized production capacity and enable the site to produce advanced high-strength steel (AHSS) and other automotive products. Nucor Steel Berkeley expects to produce the first coil by mid-2025.

Nitrex delivered a pit nitriding furnace to Arslan Aluminyum, a Turkish aluminum producer. The company recently added three new extrusion presses, which increased the demand for nitriding dies and necessitated a large-capacity nitriding system for the biggest press. The Nitrex furnace is designed to treat workloads up to 4,400 pounds (2,000 kg) that are 39 inches (1,000 mm) in diameter and 59 inches (1,500 mm) high. The heavy-duty furnace incorporates multiple controlled heating zones for optimal temperature uniformity inside the retort. It is made to quickly heat up and maintain consistent temperatures throughout the load. Arslan uses the system to nitride H11 and H13 dies that extrude aluminum profiles.

EFD Induction and IPT Technology merged to become ENRX. The new company is an international supplier of industrial induction heating equipment, as well as solutions for wireless induction charging and contactless induction power supply. EFD Induction manufactures a range of induction heating and induction hardening systems, tube welders and induction heating coils for industries including automotive and renewable energy. IPT Technology provides a range of wireless charging solutions for e-mobility applications and contactless power supply systems for industrial rail applications. The combined company is represented in more than 80 countries and holds over 1,200 patents for induction technology.

Visser Precision, a Denver-based contract manufacturer serving industries including aerospace, purchased and received two metal 3D printers from Velo3D to expand its 3D-printing capabilities. One of the printers delivered is the first Sapphire printer calibrated for Haynes 214, a nickel-based superalloy that is now available as a powder option. The other Sapphire printer is calibrated for Inconel 718, which is commonly used in many aerospace and industrial applications for its high strength and corrosion resistance. Visser Precision purchased the metal 3D printers after a mutual aerospace customer sought to leverage Velo3D’s additive-manufacturing technology for components in its rocket engines.

A single-strand caster supplied by SMS group for ultra-wide and thick slabs has successfully started production at Nucor’s plate mill in Brandenburg, Ky. Designed for an annual capacity of 1.45 million tons, it is a core element of the production chain for the new facility. This makes Nucor Steel Brandenburg one of a few mills in the United States capable of manufacturing at scale the heavy-gauge plate used in monopile foundations for offshore wind towers. According to Nucor, the mill will be able to produce 97% of the plate products that are bought and used on the domestic market.

BHP and global engineering firm Hatch signed an agreement to design an electric smelting furnace (ESF) pilot plant in Australia. The facility will aim to demonstrate a pathway to lower CO₂ intensity in steel production using iron ore from BHP’s Pilbara mines. The small-scale demonstration plant would be used to collaborate with steel producers and technology providers with the aim of accelerating scale-up of ESF plant designs. The ESF allows for greater flexibility in input raw materials, addressing a key barrier to wider adoption of other lower-CO₂ emissions production routes, such as use of electric-arc furnaces (EAFs), which are designed for scrap steel and high-grade DRI only. The ESF also has the potential to be integrated into a steel plant’s existing downstream production units.

According to the Reshoring Initiative’s 2022 data report, reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) job announcements in 2022 were at the highest rate ever recorded. There was 364,000 reshoring and FDI jobs announced for 2022, which was up 53% from 2021’s record number. Fourth-quarter announcements accelerated even more than anticipated due to the Chips and Infrastructure Acts and deglobalization trends. In addition, 2022 brought the total number of job announcements since 2010 to nearly 1.6 million.

Tenova will supply an electric-arc furnace (EAF) with a production capacity of 950,000 tons of liquid steel for seamless pipe manufacturing to Tenaris’ Campana mill in Argentina. The EAF, which is equipped with Consteel technology and electromagnetic stirrer Consteerrer, will replace one of two existing EAF units and result in the same productivity of the two existing EAFs combined. In addition to the Consteel EAF, Tenova will provide engineering services.

United States Steel Corp. and CarbonFree Chemicals Holdings signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to jointly pursue the capture of CO₂ emissions generated from U.S. Steel’s Gary Works manufacturing plant using CarbonFree’s SkyCycle technology. If a definitive agreement is reached, the project is expected to capture and mineralize up to 50,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year, the equivalent of carbon emissions from nearly 11,000 passenger cars. Patented SkyCycle technology captures carbon emissions from hard-to-abate industrial sources before entering the atmosphere, converts the CO₂ into the specialty chemical precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) and produces hydrochloric acid as a co-product.