Magnetics Business & Technology - January/February 2021 - 22

PRODUCT NEWS

Arcanum Alloys Meets Current and Future Demand for High-Quality Electrical Steel
By Adam Thomas, Dir. NPI, Marketing & Founding Team

Electrification of the automotive industry continues as automakers around the world introduce new hybrid-electric- and electricvehicles (HEV/EV). HEV/EV battery prices, previously 6-8%
of an electric vehicle's cost, have fallen roughly 87% in real
terms since 2010 as manufacturing method improvements and
economies of scale kick in. As increasing portions of the population and governments around the world attribute use of internal
combustion engines to pollution and climate change, this cost
reduction makes HEV/EVs more appealing to both consumers'
consciences and their wallets.
But what about the electromagnetic motors turned by the electrons stored in those HEV/EV batteries? The motors in HEV/EV
drivetrains utilize high-performance electrical steel sheet laminations that are stacked into a motor core and wound with wire.
The performance of the electrical steel can have substantial
impacts on the power train system design, directly influencing the
motor torque and vehicle range. The high-performance comes
largely from the addition of silicon and aluminum to the steel, and
additionally from extra gauge-reduction practices. HEV/EV market growth has driven the growth of the high-performance electrical steel market segment at double-digit annual rates for the last
decade and is expected to continue to do so for the remainder
of this decade. Consequently, this is driving investment by steel
mills around the world to increase capacity or start new production of these grades. However, a deficit of this economically
critical material is predicted in the second half of this decade as
demand outpaces supply.
Coincidentally, the aerospace, medical, and other industries rely
on even higher power density motors made from even higher
grades of electrical steel than the grades used in the automotive
industry. High power-density motors utilize high-performance
grades of electrical steel laminations. Sometimes, these applica-

Magnetics Business & Technology *

January/February 2021

tions utilize Cobalt alloyed steels that are an order of magnitude
more expensive than the highest grades of silicon and aluminum
containing steels. Cobalt steels offer a very high power-density
but are typically avoided in high-speed applications. When electric motors made from cobalt steels are operated at high-speed,
and thus high-frequency, eddy currents and hysteresis generated
in the motor core produce substantial heat waste. This heat can
often necessitate cooling systems, thus cancelling out the benefit
of the higher power-density offered by the cobalt steels. Increasingly, motor designers are looking to thinner and thinner grades
of very high-performance electrical steels alloyed with silicon
and aluminum to achieve high-power density at high speeds.
Despite increased demand, achieving high-power density at high
speeds in thin grades of high-performance electrical steels with
desired alloy compositions remains a challenge for motor designers.
To meet current and future industrial demand for very high-quality electrical steels, Arcanum Alloys has developed a new class of
electrical steel alloys made using a revolutionary steel manufacturing technology.
Arcanum Alloy's SODA flat-rolled steel products are manufactured at full-scale on traditional coil processing assets. All of the
metallurgically relevant alloying elements can be used in SODA
products. Long-term, Arcanum Alloys endeavors to develop
alloys the market wants (or can only imagine) and that existing
mills cannot manufacture due to limitations on casting or rolling.
In the short term, SODA enables Arcanum Alloys and its partners rapid entry into existing alloy markets using a fraction of
the CAPEX typically required to enter a new market in the steel
industry. Arcanum Alloys' second product category, Opticore, is
a range of non-grain oriented electrical steels designed for highperformance applications.

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