Comparison of Alternate Current Electric Arc Furnace with Direct Current Electric Arc Furnace with their Static Var Compensator Configurations

An electric arc is purely resistive load, but the series connected reactor to smoothen the arc makes the combination inductive load creating power quality issues like harmonic generation, poor power factor, voltage flickers etc. An electric arc furnace is heart of integrated steel plant used for smelting of steel with help of electric arc. Temperatures insider the furnace can reach up to 1800° centigrade and capacity wise electric arc furnaces are available from 1–300 tonnes. The charged material is directly exposed to the electric arc and results into hot liquid steel. The charged material can be steel scrap, direct reduced iron and hot metal. The electric arc furnace can be classified as alternate current electric arc furnace (AC EAF) and direct current electric arc furnace (DC EAF) depending upon source of power used at furnace for arcing. The objective of this review is to compare the configuration and harmonics generated by operation of AC EAF and DC EAF. Static Var compensator (SVC) is solution to mitigate the power quality issues generated by the electric arc furnace. This review also compares configurations of the SVCs used for AC EAF and DC EAF.