In December 2015, a contract was signed between GERDAU and Danieli for the upgrade of the non-ferrous scrap separation system at Gerdau’s steel mill in Whitby, Ontario.
This job has been a challenge from many points of view, given the performances required from the plant not limited to the compliance of the local standards in terms of safety and design prescriptions.
Danieli has been awarded to be the main responsible for the overall system design, from initial conceptual layout to supply, either procured and fabricated, of all equipment required to achieve the performance targets required by Gerdau.
The technology for the new system allows Gerdau to sort the ASR and landfilled material and extract non-ferrous scrap metal that is not used in the steelmaking process. The non-ferrous metals, such as aluminum, copper and stainless steel, can be separated from the scrap steel mix and recycled or sold to be used in other manufacturing processes. With the new plant fully operational, Gerdau is able to process more than 40 million pounds of non-ferrous scrap material annually.
The Whitby mill uses ferrous scrap steel from end-of-life vehicles and other sources to be melted and produced into merchant bar quality products and reinforcing steel used in a variety of applications, including major commercial buildings, freeways, bridges, parking garages and other concrete structures throughout North America.
The performance test period was characterized by the satisfactory achievement of all the contractual performance figures, some of them even over and above contractual requirements. GERDAU signed the Final Acceptance Certificate on April 27, 2017.