Steel Production for Rail in the UK

[LNW-GW Joint]

As far as I know, steel rail in the UK (mostly procured by Network Rail of course) comes from (Chinese owned) British Steel at Scunthorpe.
There is also some importation of specialist components from the EU (eg the S&C recently ordered from Austria for HS2).
Scunthorpe has also exported steel rail in the recent past to France for LGV construction, the product being finished at the British Steel plant at Hayange in Moselle (now part of Liberty Steel).
Does anybody know if steel production for rail is dependent on the blast furnace process, or can it be manufactured using an electric arc furnace?

What I am getting at is whether there is any supply issue for rail in the UK if Scunthorpe converts to electric arc furnace production, and will we become reliant on imports?
Network Rail's order level for new rail isn't likely to increase, but the main HS2 order is yet to be placed.
It looks as though all four UK blast furnaces (two each at Scunthorpe and Port Talbot) will be converted to electric arc production over the next few months/years.

 

[800001]

As far as I know, steel rail in the UK (mostly procured by Network Rail of course) comes from (Chinese owned) British Steel at Scunthorpe.
There is also some importation of specialist components from the EU (eg the S&C recently ordered from Austria for HS2).
Scunthorpe has also exported steel rail in the recent past to France for LGV construction, the product being finished at the British Steel plant at Hayange in Moselle (now part of Liberty Steel).
Does anybody know if steel production for rail is dependent on the blast furnace process, or can it be manufactured using an electric arc furnace?

What I am getting at is whether there is any supply issue for rail in the UK if Scunthorpe converts to electric arc furnace production, and will we become reliant on imports?
Network Rail's order level for new rail isn't likely to increase, but the main HS2 order is yet to be placed.
It looks as though all four UK blast furnaces (two each at Scunthorpe and Port Talbot) will be converted to electric arc production over the next few months/years.

And a new electric arc being built on Teesside.

Link below to an article from The Northern Echo article from the Tees Valley Mayor.

"Steel will again be made on Teesside": Ben Houchen talks of steelworks future

In 2020 I made a firm promise to the people of Teesside, Darlington, and Hartlepool. I said I would bring Steel making back to Teesside, and today…

www.thenorthernecho.co.uk

 

[unslet]

And also,will that kibosh the new coal mine near Whitehaven as I believe the coal was primarily intended for the steel industry?

 

[zwk500]

This Summer NR placed a trial order for EAF produced Steel Rails, according to this article: https://www.railwaygazette.com/uk/network-rail-orders-trial-batch-of-green-steel-rails/64794.article#:~:text=The supplier's Ascoval plant near,rolled into rail at Hayange.

29 August 2023

UK: To help assess whether ‘green’ track renewals could be a viable option, Network Rail has ordered a trial batch of rails manufactured by Saarstahl using an electric arc furnace.

Network Rail is seeking to understand the technical differences between EAF and non-EAF steel, particularly from a welding perspective. It also needs a viable logistics chain to its long-welded rail depot at Eastleigh.

The article did state it was a single order purely to evaluate the steel at that stage. The plant in question is near Valenciennes, using scrap rail from Hayange:

The supplier’s Ascoval plant near Valenciennes in France takes scrap metal, including used rail and waste from its rail mill in Hayange, and remelts it in the electric arc furnace to produce high-quality steel bar. This is then rolled into rail at Hayange.

So it is technically possible to produce a suitable product from EAF techniques. Presumably there are trade-offs against conventionally produced rail in how it performs under various conditions, but it would not be an impossibility to source the majority of rails needed by the GB rail network from EAFs located in GB.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Yes, I'm out of date on Hayange and Ascoval. The plants are now owned by Saarstahl, part of a German metals group (sold on by Liberty Steel after the Greensill debacle).
The Railway Gazette page also has a link to a story about how Infrabel (Belgium's equivalent of Network Rail) has placed a framework contract with Saarstahl for 2800km of rail produced by the new "green" process.
So it sounds as though the EAF process is viable, but Network Rail remains to be convinced, at least for some special situations.
Much is made of the use of (French) nuclear powered electricity to produce the steel, not something we would be able to claim, at least for a while.

 

[snowball]

And also,will that kibosh the new coal mine near Whitehaven as I believe the coal was primarily intended for the steel industry?

If I remember correctly, even before the recent news, some people were saying the mine's output, or most of it, would be exported.

 

[Sonik]

I'm not an expert but from what I can gather some of the doubt cast on steel rail production from EAF is somewhat overblown and is being put about largely due to (fully understandable) concerns about job losses from closure of the blast furnaces. The story appears to be that because EAFs do not actually produce virgin steel (from ore) it's simply a method of reprocessing scrap, which may therefore be less suitable for rail steel due to impurities in the feed stock

However this ignores the fact that EAFs can indeed make virgin steel products using sponge iron, produced using a DRI process using hydrogen or natural gas. The issue with hydrogen DRI is that it requires both a high quality ore feedstock, and abundant resources of renewable hydrogen (from electrolysis and very cheap renewable electricity) neither of which are available in the UK.

Thus production of sponge iron will in future almost certainly be concentrated in countries with the needed resources on hand, such as Sweden, Australia, Chile and Namibia. The UK steelworks can simply import DRI.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Nov 2023 ==

If I remember correctly, even before the recent news, some people were saying the mine's output, or most of it, would be exported.

In a world rapidly moving to decarbonized steel production (and particularly in Europe) the decision to open a new coking coal mine is insane. It may yet fail to attract sufficient funding because investors know where the steel industry is heading.

 

[ac6000cw]

As far as I know, steel rail in the UK (mostly procured by Network Rail of course) comes from (Chinese owned) British Steel at Scunthorpe.
There is also some importation of specialist components from the EU (eg the S&C recently ordered from Austria for HS2).
Scunthorpe has also exported steel rail in the recent past to France for LGV construction, the product being finished at the British Steel plant at Hayange in Moselle (now part of Liberty Steel).
Does anybody know if steel production for rail is dependent on the blast furnace process, or can it be manufactured using an electric arc furnace?

So it sounds as though the EAF process is viable, but Network Rail remains to be convinced, at least for some special situations.

The EVRAZ steel mill in Pueblo, Colorado which is the largest manufacturer of rail in North America, produces it from 98% recycled scrap via EAF (and AFAIK has done so for some time) - https://www.evrazna.com/rail

So it's hard to see there would be any serious issues with NR using rail manufactured from EAF steel, but I can understand NR wanting to test it for a while first.

 

[Verulamius]

Could the EAF process use old rails as a feedstock for producing new ones?

 

[ac6000cw]

Could the EAF process use old rails as a feedstock for producing new ones?

Given that old rails are probably regarded as 'good' scrap (being usually not contaminated with anti-corrosion coatings like paint, zinc or tin as a lot of scrap is) I assume they already are as part of the scrap mix, somewhere in the world. Globally about 30% of steel is produced using EAF (and it's over 70% in the USA, for example).

 

[Bryson]

The Hayange site used to roll steel billets cast at Scunthorpe. Once the mill left the British Steel group they quickly moved over to EAF produced steel billets cast in a number of locations, not just Ascoval.

There is no difference in the rails but the safety critical nature of the industry requires the validation of the whole supply chain and so each new source of billets had to be tested and approved by the rail users.

The SRSM at Scunthorpe will no doubt go through the same process - just as it did when the SRSM took over from the older Workington rail mill.

 

[WatcherZero]

I remember a couple of years back HS2 was saying the bulk of their rail would be imported apart from a few elements like points and crossovers which used specialist steels and could be produced in the UK.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I remember a couple of years back HS2 was saying the bulk of their rail would be imported apart from a few elements like points and crossovers which used specialist steels and could be produced in the UK.

I think it might be the reverse of that, as the S&C contract (the only one let so far) went to Austria (Voestalpine).
HS2 might need to renegotiate that, as the ITT scope was Phase 1 and 2a to Crewe.

 

[Sonik]

There is a lot of info about EAF steel and scrap processing issues in this document

https://www.makeuk.org/-/media/files/uk-steel/uk-steel-net-zero-steel---a-vision-for-the-future-of-uk-steel-production---july-2022.pdf

It does say that the impurities of recycled EAF steel is more of a problem for thin sheet products than for long products like rails.

Also says the UK produces more scrap than total current UK steel production

 

[WatcherZero]

I think you might have misread that "For flat products, which often require a high degree of formability, this strength is an issue. Long product rail also requires a high degree of internal cleanliness and much rail in Europe is therefore still made via the ore based route."
They dont seem to be forecasting much increased demand for finished rail, 2015 UK demand 166,000 tonnes p/a (£84m), 2030 182,000 (£94m) current UK sales £80m p/a. Of course now both Welsh and Sheffield steel are moving from blast furnaces to arc furnaces.

I think it might be the reverse of that, as the S&C contract (the only one let so far) went to Austria (Voestalpine).
HS2 might need to renegotiate that, as the ITT scope was Phase 1 and 2a to Crewe.

Not sure. They said the foundation plates work went to a French firm (which just happened to be a subsidiary of the contractor) as of the 7 bids to supply the steel on 2 were British and neither could meet the delivery deadline. But the Voestalpine contract being £210m over 20 years shows you how little proportionally the steel is compared to the rest of the work.

 

[Bryson]

The "Cleanliness" is to do with unwanted metals that become dissolved in the steel during re-cycling. When you produce from ore you don't have these.

The dissolved metals - for example copper can't easily be removed and can have detrimental effects on the mechanical properties. These are usually called residuals.

The standards for the various steel grades include the maximum concentration allowed for these residuals. It's up to the metallurgist to make a charge in the EAF to achieve the specification, this will be done through careful materials selection so that the dilution of any contamination is great enough to meet the specification.

If the specification is met then it makes no difference what production route was used.

 

[Big Jumby 74]

The standards for the various steel grades include the maximum concentration allowed for these residuals.

Having seen this thread on TV news other day about blast furnaces giving way to arc furnaces, it did make me wonder about the strength/resilience of steel products going forward, as common sense (to me) says if production is from the base product (as it comes out the ground), the resultant man made product must be more robust than any product that is made from 'used' steel which is likely to have some impurities in it, in simple terms the 'new' product is in part second hand?
I have no background in steel production, but just something that struck me.
In essence, are we saying that the laid down standards for steel production (if blast furnaces are done away with) will have to be watered down, to allow for possible impurity contamination?

 

[Bryson]

Having seen this thread on TV news other day about blast furnaces giving way to arc furnaces, it did make me wonder about the strength/resilience of steel products going forward, as common sense (to me) says if production is from the base product (as it comes out the ground), the resultant man made product must be more robust than any product that is made from 'used' steel which is likely to have some impurities in it, in simple terms the 'new' product is in part second hand?
I have no background in steel production, but just something that struck me.
In essence, are we saying that the laid down standards for steel production (if blast furnaces are done away with) will have to be watered down, to allow for possible impurity contamination?

No The standards don't change. The stand sets the maximum level of contamination which is acceptable for the specific grade, this is set in stone.

Steel is endlessly re-cycled already. Even so call "Virgin" steel has up to 30% scrap steel added to it at the refining stage.



The 3 most common production routes are shown above. The blast furnace route, the Direct reduction route and the Re-cycling route. As you can see there overlap between the methods.

Just to add that the blast furnace doesn't actually produce steel. It makes pig iron with a very high carbon content and unwanted elements like sulphur, these are removed in the Basic oxygen process that follows.

It's also worth adding the "scrap" covers a wide range of materials. Most people are thinking of what the industry calls HMS1&2 - this is all the scrap cars, fridges, washing machines and trains which are put through a shredder and sent for re-cycling. But there are many other grades of scrap many of which are actually very clean. Grades like 4A automotive bale, which is off cuts from the strips which are pressed to make car bodies - this is new unused steel which goes back for re-cycling. There are many other new production grades of various forms, all of which can be used for the more sensitive products.

Of course British steel can always buy in pig iron or DR iron as well and use this for dilution.

 

[trebor79]

Having seen this thread on TV news other day about blast furnaces giving way to arc furnaces, it did make me wonder about the strength/resilience of steel products going forward, as common sense (to me) says if production is from the base product (as it comes out the ground), the resultant man made product must be more robust than any product that is made from 'used' steel which is likely to have some impurities in it, in simple terms the 'new' product is in part second hand?
I have no background in steel production, but just something that struck me.
In essence, are we saying that the laid down standards for steel production (if blast furnaces are done away with) will have to be watered down, to allow for possible impurity contamination?

Blast furnaces are not being done away with. That activity is simply being moved to other jurisdictions which will emit just as much carbon as our blast furnaces, but without any of the other environmental standards that apply here.

 

[Sonik]

Blast furnaces are not being done away with. That activity is simply being moved to other jurisdictions which will emit just as much carbon as our blast furnaces, but without any of the other environmental standards that apply here.

Maybe, but this will be temporary. It's very telling that British Steel (a Chinese owned company) and Tata Steel UK (an Indian owned company) have decided to make very substantial UK investments (albeit with subsidies) in EAF, they are clearly not taking a punt with £1.5B of their own cash.

Because ultimately it's pretty obvious that UK will need to implement CBAM otherwise we wont be able to export to the EU (and probably the USA too) and this will ensure that the entire supply chain will eventually be low carbon. The only thing stopping UK CBAM happening immediately (as industry wants) is a few 'free trade' ideologues in government, but they will likely not be in power for much longer.

Demand for decarbonized steel is therefore likely to outstrip supply in future (due to steel users own carbon reduction obligations and CBAM) so there will be a price premium Vs high carbon BF/BOF production that already has global overcapacity. This gives UK steel a competitive advantage over e.g. China, Turkey, India or even Germany, because our electricity (i.e. scope 2 emissions) already has much lower carbon intensity and it's improving every year.

But producing low carbon Iron (i.e. H2 DR process) competitively needs very cheap electricity which the UK doesn't have. So the best solution for UK 'virgin' EAF steel making is to import H2 DRI from places that do.

 

[hwl]

Maybe, but this will be temporary. It's very telling that British Steel (a Chinese owned company) and Tata Steel UK (an Indian owned company) have decided to make very substantial UK investments (albeit with subsidies) in EAF, they are clearly not taking a punt with £1.5B of their own cash.

Traditionally the UK was very anti EAF with the government pretty unhelpful until about 7-8 years ago and huge amounts of scrap is still exported to other European countries such as Italy they have been more pro-EAF. Up until the early 1970's the government (like many other governments) still viewed investing in massive excess Blast furnace capacity to be a large steel exported and create jobs as a key policy. The problems is that all large steel producers couldn't do the same thing and this came to an end when China and India became more the self sufficient.
It is worth pointing out that annual UK scrap steel exports (mostly for EAF in other countries e.g. Italy) are larger than UK blast furnace / BOS steel output and this has been the case for decades but governments (DTI/BEIS etc.) have been very anti EAF in UK for decades with several EAF plants closing and many other barely operating.
Developed economies require comparatively little additional steel annually on net basis once recycling is take into account.

Because ultimately it's pretty obvious that UK will need to implement CBAM otherwise we wont be able to export to the EU (and probably the USA too) and this will ensure that the entire supply chain will eventually be low carbon. The only thing stopping UK CBAM happening immediately (as industry wants) is a few 'free trade' ideologues in government, but they will likely not be in power for much longer.

Demand for decarbonized steel is therefore likely to outstrip supply in future (due to steel users own carbon reduction obligations and CBAM) so there will be a price premium Vs high carbon BF/BOF production that already has global overcapacity. This gives UK steel a competitive advantage over e.g. China, Turkey, India or even Germany, because our electricity already has much lower carbon intensity and it's improving every year.

Turkey , India and Germany are all currently big buyers of scrap steel from the UK (for both BOS and EAF) so availability of lower carbon intensity scrap (compared to virgin materials) for those countries is going to decline somewhat in the short to medium term as well.
There is also a reasonable probability that steel trade balance (for steel not already built into products) will improve once we get the internal scrap steel logistic properly set up for everything being EAF.
Not good news for Newport Docks etc.

But producing low carbon Iron (i.e. H2 DR process) competitively needs very cheap electricity which the UK doesn't have. So the best solution for UK 'virgin' EAF steel making is to import low-carbon DR Iron from places that do. Competitive sources for H2 DR Iron (i.e. countries with abundant cheap renewable energy and high purity ore resources) would be Sweden, Australia, Chile, Namibia. H2 DRI plants are already being built in some of these countries.

 

[Bryson]

Traditionally the UK was very anti EAF with the government pretty unhelpful until about 7-8 years ago and huge amounts of scrap is still exported to other European countries such as Italy they have been more pro-EAF.

It used to be similar in the US, up until around the late 90's/early 00's the integrated mills (those with blast furnaces) were seen as the only serious players and the EAF supplied mills were dismissed as "Mini Mills". A wave of bankruptcies and forced consolidation changed that attitude and now the Mini Mills are the star players, with far better economics and competitiveness.

Now we see the rise of the micro mills - these raise efficiency to levels the industry could not even dream of 20 years ago. The scrap goes from the back of a truck, into the furnace, to the caster and from the caster directly into the rolling mill as soon as it is solid. Without cutting or allowing it to cool. The energy saving is massive and the mill rolls non-stop without a single break in the bar for 23 hours a day. The finished product arrives in the warehouse for dispatch lass than 2 hours after the scrap was tipped off the truck.

No one uses a Micro mill for rails but it illustrates just how out of date the UK steel industry has become when we are worrying about replacing a 14th Century technology with a 19th century one, but other domains are thinking 21st century.

 

[QueensCurve]

And also,will that kibosh the new coal mine near Whitehaven as I believe the coal was primarily intended for the steel industry?

I forecast that that pit would become a white elephant.

 

[trebor79]

Maybe, but this will be temporary. It's very telling that British Steel (a Chinese owned company) and Tata Steel UK (an Indian owned company) have decided to make very substantial UK investments (albeit with subsidies) in EAF, they are clearly not taking a punt with £1.5B of their own cash.

Because ultimately it's pretty obvious that UK will need to implement CBAM otherwise we wont be able to export to the EU (and probably the USA too) and this will ensure that the entire supply chain will eventually be low carbon. The only thing stopping UK CBAM happening immediately (as industry wants) is a few 'free trade' ideologues in government, but they will likely not be in power for much longer.

Demand for decarbonized steel is therefore likely to outstrip supply in future (due to steel users own carbon reduction obligations and CBAM) so there will be a price premium Vs high carbon BF/BOF production that already has global overcapacity. This gives UK steel a competitive advantage over e.g. China, Turkey, India or even Germany, because our electricity (i.e. scope 2 emissions) already has much lower carbon intensity and it's improving every year.

But producing low carbon Iron (i.e. H2 DR process) competitively needs very cheap electricity which the UK doesn't have. So the best solution for UK 'virgin' EAF steel making is to import H2 DRI from places that do.

Very interesting. Thanks for taking the time.

It used to be similar in the US, up until around the late 90's/early 00's the integrated mills (those with blast furnaces) were seen as the only serious players and the EAF supplied mills were dismissed as "Mini Mills". A wave of bankruptcies and forced consolidation changed that attitude and now the Mini Mills are the star players, with far better economics and competitiveness.

I remember my university professors taking about mini-mills in the early 2000s. They were of the view that they had traditionally produced poor quality steel 2but they're really catching up now and making some very good products"

 

[hwl]

It used to be similar in the US, up until around the late 90's/early 00's the integrated mills (those with blast furnaces) were seen as the only serious players and the EAF supplied mills were dismissed as "Mini Mills". A wave of bankruptcies and forced consolidation changed that attitude and now the Mini Mills are the star players, with far better economics and competitiveness.

Now we see the rise of the micro mills - these raise efficiency to levels the industry could not even dream of 20 years ago. The scrap goes from the back of a truck, into the furnace, to the caster and from the caster directly into the rolling mill as soon as it is solid. Without cutting or allowing it to cool. The energy saving is massive and the mill rolls non-stop without a single break in the bar for 23 hours a day. The finished product arrives in the warehouse for dispatch lass than 2 hours after the scrap was tipped off the truck.

No one uses a Micro mill for rails but it illustrates just how out of date the UK steel industry has become when we are worrying about replacing a 14th Century technology with a 19th century one, but other domains are thinking 21st century.

Completely agree.
Micro Mills are used for train wheels though e.g. Lucchini in Lovere

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Nov 2023 ==

Very interesting. Thanks for taking the time.

I remember my university professors taking about mini-mills in the early 2000s. They were of the view that they had traditionally produced poor quality steel 2but they're really catching up now and making some very good products"

Mini Mills at that point used to be either very good (Stainless & Maraging e.g. Forgemasters and Avesta/Outokumpu) or very bad (rebar) in steel grade / quality terms and weren't touching the middle ground.

 

[Bryson]

Micro Mills are used for train wheels though e.g. Lucchini in Lovere

A different process to long products rolling. See the video of the wheel forging at Lucchini:

https://lucchinirs.com/divisions/railway-division/railway-products/wheels/

I'm talking about this kind of place:

 

[Big Jumby 74]

No The standards don't change. The stand sets the maximum level of contamination which is acceptable for the specific grade, this is set in stone.

Steel is endlessly re-cycled already. Even so call "Virgin" steel has up to 30% scrap steel added to it at the refining stage.

Many thanks for your comprehensive reply and schema. I realise my question was somewhat simplistic !

 

[hwl]

A different process to long products rolling. See the video of the wheel forging at Lucchini:

https://lucchinirs.com/divisions/railway-division/railway-products/wheels/

I've been in few steel works in my time and seen wheel manufacture first hand in Lovere . Micro Mills definitely have a role for lower volume products but rail is bigger volumes than that in the UK.

I'm talking about this kind of place:

 

[Bryson]

Micro Mills definitely have a role for lower volume products but rail is bigger volumes than that in the UK

And I've never seen capable of rolling sections like rail. My point was more about the changing nature of the industry.

 

[p1rouette_shri]

No The standards don't change. The stand sets the maximum level of contamination which is acceptable for the specific grade, this is set in stone.

Steel is endlessly re-cycled already. Even so call "Virgin" steel has up to 30% scrap steel added to it at the refining stage.

View attachment 146184

The 3 most common production routes are shown above. The blast furnace route, the Direct reduction route and the Re-cycling route. As you can see there overlap between the methods.

Just to add that the blast furnace doesn't actually produce steel. It makes pig iron with a very high carbon content and unwanted elements like sulphur, these are removed in the Basic oxygen process that follows.

It's also worth adding the "scrap" covers a wide range of materials. Most people are thinking of what the industry calls HMS1&2 - this is all the scrap cars, fridges, washing machines and trains which are put through a shredder and sent for re-cycling. But there are many other grades of scrap many of which are actually very clean. Grades like 4A automotive bale, which is off cuts from the strips which are pressed to make car bodies - this is new unused steel which goes back for re-cycling. There are many other new production grades of various forms, all of which can be used for the more sensitive products.

Of course British steel can always buy in pig iron or DR iron as well and use this for dilution.

Hi Bryson,

This is such a detailed diagram showing the process of manufacturing rail steel. I'd very much like to learn more about this process, do you have any recommendations (link, websites, publications) where I can learn more about this? Thanks.