Electric replacement for cupola furnace

An electric smelting plant is supposed to replace the cupola furnace at Fritz Winter. Dutch engineering company Gemco has been awarded this contract over the competition.

Since its founding, Fritz Winter has placed great importance on protecting the environment. As early as the 1990s, the company maintained a department for environmental concerns, long before sustainability became an important issue. With ecoMelting, Fritz Winter now offers a sustainable solution for the journey towards a carbon-neutral foundry.

One option to make the foundries of Fritz Winter more climate-friendly is to change the smelting technology. The assessment included several scenarios for investment. For a more sustainable foundry, existing processes might have to be adapted. In this context, Fritz Winter and Gemco have developed a concept of how to replace a cupola furnace smelting system with a capacity of 30 tons per hour with an electric induction smelting system.

After an intense debate concerning the optimum adjustment of capacity, several concepts and suggestions were agreed upon and evaluated regarding their strengths and weaknesses. The final choice was a configuration with two 30-ton induction furnaces. Although the smelting process changes, the most important aspect, a constant supply of molten iron, remains unchanged. Other than reducing the carbon footprint through decarbonisation, induction smelting offers the advantage that the molten metal’s quality is more consistent and easier to regulate.

Another problem was finding a suitable site for the new smelting plant while guaranteeing that logistics remain cost-efficient. The new smelting plant must be installed and the conversion must be planned and carried out in a productive environment. The project was entrusted to Gemco, who immediately started work on realisation.