A new grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) from AK Steel will help manufacturers of power transformers design to higher levels of efficiency while reducing greenhouse gas emissions due to energy loss in electricity transmission and distribution. Particularly suitable for high and ultra-high voltage power transformers, the company says that its new TRAN-COR X electrical steel product family represents an important step improvement beyond the its established TRAN-COR H product line.
AK Steel is excited to introduce this new family of high permeability grain oriented electrical steel, which represents one of the highest efficiency products available in the world, said Roger Newport, Chief Executive Officer of AK Steel, when the product was launched in May. This product enables our customers to improve the overall energy efficiency of the transformers they produce.
High permeability GOES products represent the most technologically-advanced and highest-efficiency electrical steels in the world, said Newport, noting that AK Steel is the only manufacturer of GOES products in North America, which it sells to customers in the U.S. and around the globe.
According to the company, key features of the new steel enable it to provide a significant improvement in efficiency over conventional high permeability GOES at the same thickness. This avoids the use of harder to process thinner steels and allows transformer manufacturers to maintain production efficiencies while still improving transformer performance. It has an outstanding degree of grain orientation. The combination of high permeability, low residual stress and domain refining via laser scribing offers very low core losses. During the laser scribing process, a precisely focused laser beam is rapidly scanned across the steel surface. The micro-strain imparted in the material forces the pre-existing magnetic domains to subdivide. The finer domain structure reduces the distance that the domain walls must move during AC magnetization, thereby reducing eddy current losses. The result is far lower core loss than grain oriented electrical steels without laser scribing.
Grain oriented electrical steels are iron-silicon alloys that were developed to provide the low core loss and high permeability required for efficient and economical electrical transformers. AK Steels new product is suitable for distribution, medium power and large power transformers which employ stacked core technology. The patented alloy design of TRAN-COR X is only available from AK Steel, the company notes.
The companys electrical steel products contain approximately 7585% of post-consumer and post-industrial recycled materials. This content comes largely from the re-melting of scrap steel products. Not only does the electrical steel contain a high percentage of post-consumer and post- industrial recycled materials, at the end of its useful life, it is likely to be 100% recyclable.
AK Steel is a leading producer of flat-rolled carbon, stainless and electrical steel products, as well as certain components, primarily for the automotive, infrastructure and manufacturing, electrical power generation and distribution markets. Headquartered in West Chester, Ohio (Greater Cincinnati), the company has approximately 9,200 employees at manufacturing operations in the United States, as well as in Canada and Mexico. For more information see www.aksteel.com.
For more information, visit: https://www.aksteel.com/
