SMS Demag AG, Germany, has successfully completed the extensive modernization of Georgsmarienhütte GmbH’s 125-tonne DC electric arc furnace. Georgsmarienhütte granted their acceptance immediately after hot commissioning.

For the modernization project, SMS Demag lowered the shell bottom section into the tilting platform and raised the upper shell in order to expand the furnace volume significantly, resulting in optimized process sequences for scrap meltdown.

SMS Demag also carried out modifications to the upper shell, furnace roof and tilting platform. The electric arc furnace has also been equipped with a shell-changing system. Inside the main areas of the furnace shell, steel panels were replaced by panels with vertically arranged finned tubes made of copper. Copper cooling panels were also installed in the slag zone, and cooling circuits in the furnace roof were also optimized.

Georgsmarienhütte is a producer of steel bars, semi-finished and bright steel from high-quality and stainless structural steels predominantly for the automobile industry and its component suppliers. The electric arc furnace supplied to Georgsmarienhütte in 1994 was the first of its kind in Germany and to date has produced more than six million tonnes of liquid steel.

SMS Demag AG forms part of the Metallurgical Plant and Rolling Mill Technology Business Area of the SMS group. SMS GmbH is the holding for a group of companies internationally active in plant construction and mechanical engineering relating to the processing of steel, non-ferrous metals and plastics. The group is divided into the Business Areas of Metallurgical Plant and Rolling Mill Technology, Tube, Long Product and Forging Technology and Plastics Technology. In the year 2004 some 9,500 employees worldwide generated a turnover of about EUR 2.20 billion.