Steel production emissions are mostly due to traditional blast furnaces, but as the industry responds to the need for cleaner operation, alternatives are increasing in popularity. The simplest way to produce steel from high quality scrap is to melt the ferrous scrap in an electric arc furnace (EAF). With many countries restricting and controlling the construction of traditional blast furnaces, EAF is also a lower cost approach. Furthermore, if the electricity in an EAF is generated from a low carbon source, this is also a more environmentally friendly approach.

There has been a significant adoption of EAFs over the years, and more are being built to replace traditional blast furnaces. In countries where electricity is relatively low cost (and also in Europe), steel produced using electricity already accounts for around 50% of total crude steel production.

In recent decades, the increase in crude steel production has led to a rise in the amount of scrap steel globally. However, good quality steel can be produced from high quality scrap. 
According to the Power Quality blog2, the melting point of scrap steel is 1520C, requiring a minimum energy of 300 kWh per ton, although an EAF typically requires 440 kWh per ton of steel. Therefore, significant amounts of electrical energy need to be delivered and reliably controlled for the duration of manufacturing steel.

The best solution is based on silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) power controllers as, when compared to technologies such as IGBTs, SCRs provide significantly better efficiency - approaching 99.5%. At the power levels seen in an EAF, it is important to eliminate losses wherever possible.