Scheduled for delivery in Q1 2026, the heater is based on Prothal® DH technology and will be the first electric process gas heater for DRI that Kanthal has supplied for commercial use.
The Emsteel plant produces high-quality long products, including heavy sections, bars and wire rods, and is equipped with an Energiron DRI plant. The company is now taking another step towards making this low-emission plant even more environmentally friendly by installing a 1 MW electric process gas heater supplied by Kanthal and Danieli.
Prothal® DH has been developed and tested by Kanthal in collaboration with Danieli, and is now being prepared for commercialisation. This technology has the potential to eliminate CO₂ emissions from the heating process entirely while enhancing energy efficiency.
“We’re pleased to see the technology that we have developed being implemented in an end-user production setting. To enable industrial decarbonisation, electric preheating of gas will become a very important application in the next few years, and we are preparing to meet that demand”,
says Simon Lile, President of the Heating Systems Business Unit at Kanthal.
In 2024, Kanthal and Danieli signed a strategic partnership agreement to develop and industrialise full-scale electric process gas heaters for DRI and other ironmaking applications. The heating solution is being developed for use with hydrogen, natural gas, and combinations of the two, thereby enabling existing DRI plants to be retrofitted. Installing this technology in Energiron’s hydrogen-ready DRI plants will enable fully emission-free DRI production. Even natural gas-based DRI plants will achieve a reduction in CO₂ emissions of more than 30% when electrifying the heating system.
(Source: Kanthal)
