Citizens of the European Union generate over 25 million tons of plastic waste each year, but unfortunately less than 30% of it is recycled. Worldwide, plastic accounts for 85% of all the waste found on beaches. Plastic prevention strategies that have been drafted over the past years did lead to improvements, but for sustainably recovering our environment the new “Plastics Strategy Universalis 2021” has been published in Brussels today. According to these plans, all plastic bags will be banned from the retail market in Europe, starting 2022! As a replacement, Europe is going to count on high-quality stainless steel that […]
Knowledge
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The Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Regions and Tourism has laid down the necessity of waste avoidance, recycling management and resource conservation. We at Breitenfeld Edelstahl AG contribute significantly to the issue of recycling management by processing metallic waste (scrap). The waste generated during steel production is to a large extent reintroduced into the production process through processing measures. To name a few examples of our recycling management and resource conservation measures in Breitenfeld: Smelting waste: The smelting waste consists mainly of waste from the casting areas. This includes sands, casting ceramics, casting powder and dusts, as well as a metallic […]
Recycling is a very touchy subject in the production of stainless steel. In the electric arc furnace at Breitenfeld Edelstahl AG (the biggest in Austria), electricity is used to recycle scrap. A large part (up to 90%) of the raw material we use for the production are materials that are recycled. This makes topics like environment and sustainability very important for our production and in other areas of our company, as well. For this reason and because of our desire to strengthen cooperation projects with local companies in our region, we bring our IT hardware to re.use-electro. pro mente steiermark […]
Slag is the tool of steel production. The lighter slag floats on the melt and can absorb and bind unwanted elements from the steel. By that, you can increase the so-called degree of purity of the steel. After the work being done the slag has different colorings (depending on the elements absorbed) and is nothing more than artificially produced rock.
Depending on its chemical composition, steel changes its properties very strongly. If it contains more than 12% chromium, it is coated with a chromium oxide layer only a few atoms thick, which protects it from corrosion. An example of such stainless steel is cutlery. By immersing stainless steel in saline solutions, the salt eats wholes into the protective layer. This can happen, for example, when too much salt is used in the dishwasher.
As of today, the most efficient way to recycle steel is the electric arc furnace (EAF). The steel is produced by passing high currents through huge graphite electrodes into the scrap. Between two of our graphite electrodes flows about as much current as through 200,000 light bulbs.