New method for estimating economic penalties on Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI) due to material degradation during storing

Steelmaking is immersed on continuous development of new steel products with higher performance and lower environmental footprint. This new paradigm places scrap recycling steel manufacturing processes as one of the main alternatives for the steelmaking industry. Using heterogeneous recycled scrap mixtures for building new and more demanding steel products require the use of Hot briquetted Iron (HBI) to reduce process uncertainties process. However, HBI might be stored for long periods of time and is affected by atmospheric corrosion that degrades its initial quality. The present work proposes, for the first time, a methodology to empirically quantify the influence of this degradation phenomenon on the EAF performance by extending the calculation of the Value In Use considerating degradation processes. The proposed equations allow estimating the extra cost induced by HBI degradation during storing periods and help calculating a more precise scrap mixture to deal with the required technical and cost specifications.