Castmetal Vitoria

Customer details

Trading name: Castmetal Vitoria (SAFE METAL).
Address: Vitoria-Gasteiz, Álava.
Activity: Thermal treatment and steel production.

Background

Producing carbon or low alloy steels requires annealing or tempering furnaces, which are essential to produce different components, such as lorry axle housing, crossmembers, dozer loaders or railway bogie sleepers.

They are all large parts requiring a large amount of energy to power the thermal treatment furnaces and, in turn, they need large consumption volumes that can be decisive in determining how competitive a company is.

Existing facility

Even though Castmetal already used natural gas to heat its offices, when it came to heating the main workshops using radiant screens, they subcontracted the tempering furnace and annealing furnace part when necessary.

Nortegas’s proposal was to expand the existing natural gas facilities in order to implement that process and eliminate the ensuing dependencies, thus generating more business and ensuring Castmetal could be more competitive.

Solution provided

Based on the study carried out for Castmetal, these tasks were performed to improve its facilities:

Expansion of the natural gas supply to power the new tempering furnace and the annealing furnace for thermal treatments.
Extension of the existing ERM (Gas Regulation and Measurement Station), from which a new derivation was set up for the two furnaces.

Results

Thanks to the advantages of natural gas and the incorporation of the new furnaces, the benefits for Castmeal were as follows:

They no longer had to subcontract that part of the process, which meant the company would be more competitive and independent, while also vertically integrating the whole value chain of the production process.
33.7% savings in CO₂ emissions. They will thus emit 261 Tm of CO₂ fewer per year compared to a diesel furnace of the same characteristics
Fewer emissions: natural gas produces hardly any combustibles which dramatically reduces the emissions of particulates to the atmosphere.
73.7% economic savings with respect to a diesel furnace of the same characteristics and 48.2% economic savings compared to an electric furnace of the same characteristics.

33.7% savings in emissions

73.7% economic savings

Contact

Nortegas will help you carry out your installation as efficiently as possible. If you already have a natural gas installation, we will help you to adapt your facilities to the new processes, with the help of our authorised installers and our team with extensive experience in gas-based solutions.

If, on the other hand, you do not have any type of installation, we will provide a personalised study and adapted to your needs. If you are considering a change of system or a new installation, we have a team of experts to advise you.