Marketplace Need

The dominant market share traditionally enjoyed by gas technologies in heat treating applications is being challenged by new electro-technologies at a time when gas industry representative awareness has greatly diminished due to organizational changes brought about by energy industry deregulation and corporate restructuring.

Technology

A wide range of gas technologies is available for heat treating applications. Some of the emerging and existing gas heat treating technologies addressed in this program include:

These technologies will address applications such as annealing, normalizing, hardening, tempering, surface hardening, carburizing, and others.

Customer Benefits

Natural gas technologies typically offer heat treating customers important benefits, including: increased energy savings, lower or equal capital costs, and reduced maintenance. Other benefits are related to specific processes and include high reliability, process repeatability or part uniformity, and environmental compliance.

Market Segmentation

Heat treating can be divided into two main categories: commercial and captive. Commercial heat treating is relatively easy to identify since these facilities almost universally have an SIC classification of 3398 for their primary or secondary listing. Captive heat treating, which is by far the predominate type of operating, can have classifications varying over the SIC range of 33xx to 39xx and includes others such as 5051.

Heat treating also includes many different processes within each category such as annealing, tempering, hardening, carburizing, etc., with various processing times, temperatures, and atmosphere requirements for each. This creates the challenge for gas utilities to maintain expertise in all the facets of the market.

Market Potential

A recent study commissioned by the Industrial Center estimates that 125 million tons of metal products will be processed by heat treating for year 2000. The total energy used in these processes amounts to 140 TBtu per year. Gas represents about 78% of this use (110 TBtu) and electric represents 15% (21 TBtu). The total gas load potential in heat treating in 2005 can reach 146 TBtu, which includes 11 Bcf from new or emerging gas technologies. The top 10 states/provinces for heat treating facilities in the US and Canada are: MI, OH, CA, TX, IL, IN, PA, NJ, MA, and NY.

Program Goals

1. To educate the consortia on the heat treating market, processes, equipment, and sales channels/contacts.

2. To provide consortia representatives with sales tools, and prospect lists to effectively target their efforts and maximize their ability to successfully close sales opportunities.

3. To facilitate and assist in the development of demonstration sites for new emerging gas heat treating technologies within the consortia representatives' service territories.

Program Plan

Training Workshop:

A one-day training workshop will be developed utilizing one or more consultants to be held on-site at the consortia representative's facility, with a companion reference handbook for each person attending. The workshop will focus on providing an overview of the heat treating industry/market segments, as well as the processes and equipment used for heat treating. The competitive position of gas vs. other fuels will be addressed, including sample economic comparisons and identification of gas opportunities.

Sales Tools:

An Online Heat Treating Equipment Buyer's Guide will be developed to educate consortia representatives and customers on the various conventional and emerging gas equipment available for various heat treating applications. In addition, a database/web page of heat treating manufacturers and their local manufacturers' reps will be developed to assist consortia member networking/sales activities at the local level.

Prospect Generation:

A list of over 500 commercial and 1,500 captive heat treating facilities has been developed by the Industrial Center and the Heat Treat Network. This valuable database of heat treaters will be given to each consortium member representative to prospect and pre-qualify customers for joint sales calls with local equipment manufacturers.

Technical Consultants:

A list of technical consultants in the heat treating field will be developed for consortia members to access, if needed, during the sales cycle process. These consultants will be categorized by their expertise related to specific process and equipment type. This resource will be available to assist members in sales cycles where certain heat treating expertise is not available "in house", and would be difficult and time-consuming to locate.

Demonstration Sites:

Showcase demonstrations for emerging gas technologies in the heat treating industry will be pursued on an individual member basis, as desired. Leveraged funding for these sites will be sought in collaboration with strategic partnerships with DOE, state organizations, GRI, and equipment manufacturers. Consortia members will only contribute dollars, as appropriate for sites in their service area.

See the Heat Treating Consortium web site