Windows of Opportunity: An Interview with Tenova HYL
03/01/2013 - The perfect storm is brewing for Monterrey, Mexico-based Tenova HYL: with the steel industry focusing on sustainability and with shale plays making natural gas abundant and affordable, the direct reduction (DR) plant supplier is a step ahead of the technology curve, and working hard to stay there.
This article was featured in the January 2013 issue of Iron & Steel Technology.
The perfect storm is brewing for Monterrey, Mexico-based Tenova HYL: with the steel industry focusing on sustainability and with shale plays making natural gas abundant and affordable, the direct reduction (DR) plant supplier is a step ahead of the technology curve, and working hard to stay there.
Iron & Steel Technology sat down with three leaders of the HYL Technologies iron and steel division — president and CEO Carlos Garza, commercial vice president Pablo Duarte, and marketing and sales manager Thomas Scarnati — to discuss how the company got where it is today and where it is heading in the future.
HYL Technologies had for many years the most advanced technology, providing energy efficiency and low environmental impact, Duarte explained, but the commercialization of direct reduction technology had limited success in the 1980s and 1990s.
“The company was tremendously successful at developing technology, but not at commercializing,” Scarnati said.
It was in 2005 that Italy’s Techint Group, parent company of Tenova, acquired HYL Technologies and business accelerated for the company. HYL’s technologies and Tenova’s world-class administration and commercial systems were an “excellent fit,” explained Duarte. After the spinoff, Tenova HYL began to focus on commercializing its products.
As part of the process, in 2006, a partnership between Techint, Tenova HYL and Danieli was formed to bring the Energiron brand to the iron and steel industry. Energiron, an innovative direct reduction technology from HYL, brought together the capabilities and experiences of the three companies to provide the leading technology for DR plants at the most competitive cost.
Tenova HYL is currently active in many parts of the world. Although political instability in Egypt slowed down business somewhat, projects have now been restarted there. Personnel are currently undergoing training programs for operations and maintenance at the Suez project. The 1.95 million tpy plant, which uses the reformerless Energiron ZR configuration, should be starting up relatively soon. EZZ Steel’s 1.9 million tpy plant, however, which includes a gas reformer, is still on hold due the political situation. In the Middle East, the company is actively bidding for projects, particularly in Saudi Arabia. In the United Arab Emirates, two 1.6-million-tonne Emirates Steel plants are being upgraded and revamped to 2-million-tonne plants, and there are plans for additional projects there. There are also active projects within the United States, the most notable being the construction of Nucor Corp.’s US$750 million DRI facility in Louisiana.
Pictured below: Tenova HYL's 1.6 million tonne per year Energiron plant at Emirates Steel Industries
Tenova HYL recently delivered a reactor to Nucor’s site in Convent, La., through an impressive process. It took a week to move the 1,000-ton reactor from the fabrication shop in Houston, Texas, to the plant site, roughly 50 miles outside New Orleans, La. A barge larger than the size of a football field carried Tenova HYL’s largest module ever across the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi River to the site. A truck with 174 axles then delivered the module to the site. Most of the rest of the equipment for Nucor’s facility is already there, the executives noted, as the 2.5 million tpy DRI module is on track to be up and running by August 2013. The steelmaker has been permitted for the construction and operation of two plants with a combined annual DRI production of 5.5 million tons, so it is likely that Tenova HYL will provide the company with another module in the future.
The Tenova HYL executives were asked if the northeast U.S. will ever develop a legitimate interest in a DRI module. Due to confidentiality clauses, they could not reveal much, but Duarte explained, “We are working on many fronts.” Feasibility studies are being conducted in the U.S. and elsewhere in North America.
The company believes its technologies have a special place in the industry and believe it is well positioned to take advantage of the many opportunities. “Steelmaking won’t be the same in the future as it is now,” Scarnati commented. This is why the company continues to invest in research and development and is continuously working to improve its technologies: it is working with gasifiers to improve energy efficiency, with iron ore pellet producers to improve quality, and with EAF meltshops to produce direct reduced iron, explained Garza.
Tenova HYL is also helping to prepare students for careers within its company, through student programs and partnerships with local universities. It works with the AIST Mexico Member Chapter to provide scholarships and programming for students. In addition, the company has its own international training program; it rotates its young professionals through positions around the world to give them experience in different areas of the company. The skills shortage that exists in many countries around the world is not currently being felt by the company, Duarte said, as universities in both Mexico and Italy are producing skilled engineers. The company says it is big on intellectual capital: “People are our assets,” Duarte noted.
In the meantime, new drilling technologies in the natural gas industry have created an avenue for the U.S. and North America to be competitive once again and have opened up brand-new opportunities for Tenova HYL. Shale gas has caused a welcomed technological disruption and is setting new rules. “This is the moment,” the executives said with a smile.
Pictured below: 200,000 tonne per year Tenova HYL ZR Micro-module at Gulf Sponge Iron in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
