Take electric steelmaking, for example. Load buckets of scrap, pig iron or DRI into the electric arc furnace according to need, insert the electrodes, turn on the power, skim the slag and tap the molten steel. Then start all over again.

Those basic steps are followed by many electric steelmakers and work well, but over 30 years ago inventor John A. Vallomy started to pursue an idea that seemed to offer

considerable advantages for what sounds like a simple variation on the process. Why not charge the furnace continuously, instead of using batch charging, by feeding raw material into the furnace on a conveyor belt, and maintain a liquid pool of molten steel to melt it, using less electric power just to maintain the temperature needed in the furnace?

After ten “miserable” years of effort to convert the seemingly straightforward concept into a reality, the first commercial Consteel plant came on line in the USA in 1989. Techint subsequently brought the technology under its roof and, now as part of Tenova’s range, invited Vallomy and representatives from the 36 Consteel plants now in operation to come together in Milan to celebrate the 20th anniversary of that first installation. Another ten plants are on their way.

The technology has helped another steelmaking innovator, Giovanni Arvedi, to realise his “dream” of building a works capable of continuously producing steel strip as thin as

0.8 mm. Arvedi’s works, in Cremona, Italy, has the largest of those 36 Consteel installations to feed his endless strip production (ESP) line. It provides the level of mass flow needed to achieve continuous casting and rolling.

Parallels can be found in non-ferrous plant. The earliest experimental flash smelting furnaces, built over 50 years ago by the forefathers of Finland’s Outotec, frequently burnt down. Today, the long-established pyrometallurgical process pioneered by them is responsible for half the world’s copper production. The newer hydrometallurgical processes successfully developed to deal with other, trickier, types of ore and, where desired, to process ore on a smaller initial scale, are still seeing further refinement. They enable modular expansion of capacity to suit the strategies and markets of their users.

Major breakthroughs in technologies like these are relatively few and far between, requiring bold investments and much initial research before companies develop them. Acceptance of a greater degree of initial risk by the first commercial users deploying them on an industrial scale is needed. It is easier to take a conservative approach and use tried and tested technology.

Most improvement in metals technology today is incremental. In recent decades it has been enabled by the phenomenal growth and speed of computing power and memory, combined with its falling cost.

At a celebration held in October to mark the 40th anniversary of its foundation, Danieli Automation, based near Udine, Italy, demonstrated just a few of the fruits of that trend in IT and telecommunications. Exhibits included the ability to offer remote advice to plants using Danieli equipment worldwide; plant simulation to offer clients a virtual tour of Danieli plants – and advanced training of operators to use them – before they are built; automated strip inspection equipment; and a robot to enable safe delivery of casting powder in a potentially hazardous industrial environment without human intervention.

While today’s technologies seldom take as long as ten years to develop, and technicians now have much more powerful software development tools, they build on years of previous researchers’ discoveries and still require considerable effort by the teams involved. When it comes to technological innovation and development, perseverance still pays.