C-DRONE GUIDE · 26 AUGUST 2026
Drone and Electric Arc Furnace Steel Plant: ICPE Headings 2545 and 3220, Shed Roof, Dust Extraction and Prices
A casting bay spanning sixty metres, a roof punctuated with skylights and smoke vents that nobody has seen up close since the last major shutdown, a primary dust-extraction stack whose ducting snakes above the ladle traffic lanes, and out in the yard a scrap stockpile that rises and falls with each charge. At an electric arc furnace steel plant, almost everything a maintenance department needs to check sits at height, above an installation running continuously, in an environment of radiant heat, dust and heavy coactivity where you cannot put up scaffolding or bring in a lift on a simple purchase order. Here is what the drone documents on this kind of site, what it absolutely does not replace, and the prices.
Published on 26 August 2026, reviewed on 29 August 2026 — regulations in force as of August 2026.
Electric arc furnace steel plant: ICPE headings 2545, 3220 and 3230
An electric arc furnace steel plant — a furnace charged with scrap, ladle metallurgy, continuous casting, often followed by a hot rolling mill on the same site — falls in France under several cumulative headings of the classified installations nomenclature. The first is ICPE heading 2545, worded « Acier, fer, fonte, ferro-alliages (fabrication d') » with an exclusion for electric-furnace ferro-alloy production where the combined power of the furnaces able to run simultaneously is below 100 kW : it places the activity under authorisation. The second belongs to the activities covered by the Industrial Emissions Directive : heading 3220, « Production of pig iron or steel (primary or secondary melting), including continuous casting, with a capacity exceeding 2.5 tonnes per hour », also under authorisation, which brings the site into the IED regime with its best available techniques conclusions — those for iron and steel production were set by implementing decision 2012/135/EU of 28 February 2012. Note that heading 3210, roasting or sintering of metal ore, targets the blast furnace route and its ore sintering, not the electric route fed with scrap.
Where the site includes a hot rolling mill with a capacity above 20 tonnes of crude steel per hour, it also falls under heading 3230 a), ferrous metals processing, likewise under authorisation, whose best available techniques conclusions were set by implementing decision (EU) 2022/2110 of 11 October 2022. Depending on the layout, further headings cover metal waste storage, industrial gases, oxygen depots or combustion plant. Under the authorisation regime, most applicable requirements are found not in a general ministerial order but in the site-specific prefectoral authorisation order, sitting on top of the common baseline of the order of 2 February 1998 on water abstraction and emissions from installations subject to authorisation. For a QHSE department this means one simple thing : each inspection campaign should be traceable to a named requirement in the file, and a dated image beats a patrol write-up.
Large-span shed roof: skylights, smoke vents and roofing
The casting bay and melt shop of an electric arc furnace plant are marked by a feature few other industrial buildings share : a frame span measured in tens of metres, a very high crane hook clearance, and a roof punctuated with skylights and smoke vents sized to release the secondary emissions the primary capture system does not collect. That roof takes a beating few roofs endure : cyclic thermal expansion with every cast, metallic dust deposits, acid condensates, accelerated corrosion of fixings and upstands. Nobody climbs onto it without heavy preparation, and no lift will ever reach the middle of a sixty-metre-span shed. A photogrammetric flight produces, in one morning, an orthophoto and a 3D model of the whole roof, at a resolution where you can pick out a broken skylight, a clouded translucent panel, an open expansion joint, a gutter choked with deposits or a smoke vent whose flap no longer closes properly. This is the core of our drone roof inspection service.
The value is not only in seeing clearly once : repeated on an identical flight plan from year to year, the coverage becomes a comparable series that evidences how a defect progresses and feeds a multi-year maintenance plan, an insurance file or a works negotiation. A review by Parham Nooralishahi and co-authors, published in 2021 in the journal Drones, surveys drone-based non-destructive inspection of industrial sites and highlights the method's main contribution on this kind of installation : reaching equipment at height that is otherwise hard to access, limiting operator exposure and avoiding the production shutdown that physical access would require (see the study on Google Scholar). At a steel plant, where a day of furnace downtime carries a heavy figure, this is usually the first argument a technical director takes on board — exactly the reasoning set out in our guide to calculating the ROI of an industrial drone inspection.
Stack, primary dust-extraction ducting, lime silo and hoppers
The primary dust-extraction system of an electric arc furnace plant is a structure in its own right : fourth-hole and canopy hood capture, very large diameter ducting, a cooling chamber, a bag filter with thousands of square metres of filtering surface, a fan and a stack. The whole run often passes above ladle traffic lanes and storage areas, which rules out easy access in practice. A targeted overflight documents what is visible from outside and actually matters : corrosion and shell perforation on a duct, detached or missing insulation, weeping flanges, a degraded walkway fixing, the condition of the bag-filter compartments and their hatches, dust deposits around a joint — the sign of a leak —, and on the stack itself the bands, ladders, markings and discharge traces near the top. The same logic applies to the lime silo and the addition hoppers : outer shell condition, corrosion at the cone base, the roof vent filter, dust build-up around the filling point. Our dedicated guide to drone inspection of industrial chimneys and silos sets out the method.
It is worth being precise about what the drone delivers and what it does not. A study by Mladen Zrinjski, Antonio Tupek, Duro Barkovic and Ante Polovic, published in 2021 in Sensors, compared drone photogrammetry against a total station survey on a 65 metre masonry industrial chimney : the total station reached an average accuracy of about 2.6 mm, against 25.5 mm for the drone-derived point cloud, a factor of ten — the authors conclude that a drone survey is entirely feasible, but that close attention must be paid to point-cloud accuracy whenever high-precision results are required (see the study on Google Scholar). In operational terms : the drone is excellent for spotting, dating and ranking visual defects on a stack or a duct, and for preparing an intervention ; it replaces neither a millimetre-level verticality check, nor ultrasonic thickness testing, nor the visit of a rope access technician who will touch, sound out and repair. The two combine well : the drone targets, the rope team treats.
Scrap, slag and steelmaking dust: photogrammetric volume measurement and thermal patrol
The yard of an electric arc furnace plant lives to the rhythm of the charges : feed scrap received, sorted and picked up by grab, furnace and ladle slag cooled then screened in the yard before use in road construction, continuous-casting offcuts and rejects, spent refractory bricks. Estimating these volumes from the ground is guesswork, and a scrap pile is precisely the kind of stockpile you can neither walk over nor approach safely. A drone photogrammetric survey produces a 3D model and a volume with far better accuracy than visual estimation. A study by M. H. Rohizan and co-authors, published in 2021 in IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, compared stockpile volume measured by drone photogrammetry against a conventional method, finding a gap of only 2.5 % between the two approaches (see the study on Google Scholar) ; the method, described in our guide to drone stockpile volume measurement, transposes directly to a steel plant yard. The weighbridge remains the only regulatory and contractual figure for incoming and outgoing tonnage : drone volume measurement is an inventory and management tool, not a weighing. It does, however, throw light on a point the iron and steel best available techniques conclusions address explicitly : the storage and handling of incoming materials and production residues, and the reduction of dust emissions from storage areas.
The steelmaking dust storage building deserves separate treatment. Captured at the bag filter, this dust is a hazardous waste — rich in zinc, but also in lead and cadmium, as the literature characterising electric arc furnace dust confirms — stored in a silo or an enclosed shed before shipment to a zinc recovery route. What an overflight usefully documents : the integrity of the shed's roof and cladding, doors and air curtains, the absence of wind-blown traces or loaded run-off around the building, the condition of the sealed apron and its collection network. On the cooling circuits side, a thermographic patrol spots from outside a clear anomaly on a pipe run, a leak signalled by an abnormally cold damp patch, or a cooling tower cell running out of line with its neighbours — a symptom of a failing fan, fouled packing or unbalanced water distribution. It measures no flow rate and no concentration, and dispenses with no analysis or statutory check : it tells you where to look.
Mission method, coactivity and prices
On this kind of site, the mission is more about preparation than piloting. Allow half a day of flying for a targeted scope — shed roof, stack and ducting, or storage yard — and a full day for a campaign covering a whole steel plant with its rolling mill. It all starts with a briefing with the maintenance or QHSE manager : the list of structures to cover and how each links to a requirement in the file, the melting and casting sequence to set the time slots, no-overfly areas (above the casting floor, ladle transfer, slag cooling apron), vehicle and scrap truck traffic, communication with the control room and the crane operator, a take-off point set well clear. Radiant heat and secondary fume plumes impose real stand-off margins, and the large steel masses of a shed sometimes disturb the aircraft's magnetic compass : an experienced pilot plans for degraded-mode flying and a fallback. As with any intervention on an industrial site, the prevention plan and coactivity are settled before the flight, never on the day. A steelworks frequently sits in an area with airspace constraints : always check the zone on Géoportail before any quote, and require the contractor to hold up-to-date professional liability insurance.
A word on what the service does not cover, because that is what separates a useful report from a misleading one. The drone delivers no structural survey of the frame and no load-capacity calculation — that remains the domain of an engineering consultancy. It substitutes for no statutory periodic inspection of lifting equipment, electrical installations or pressure equipment. It replaces neither air emission self-monitoring, nor periodic checks by an accredited body, nor ultrasonic thickness measurement on a suspect duct. It says nothing about the state of a refractory lining. What it brings, and what genuinely matters to an operator, is complete visual and thermal coverage, dated, repeatable and with no operator exposed at height, on structures otherwise inspected only during a shutdown. The principle is the same as at a foundry, with scales and thermal constraints of an altogether different order.
2026 prices (excl. VAT) : €600 to €1,200 for a one-off volume measurement of scrap and slag stockpiles in the yard ; €400 to €800 for a targeted inspection of a single structure (dust-extraction stack and ducting, lime silo, dust storage shed) ; €1,200 to €2,400 for a full campaign combining a site orthophoto, shed roof coverage, dust-extraction inspection, a thermal patrol of the cooling circuits and stockpile volume measurement ; €300 to €600 per visit for recurring monitoring on the same flight plan. A travel charge applies beyond a 30 to 50 km radius. Request a quote stating the shed roof area, the stack height, whether a rolling mill is present and the goal (multi-year maintenance plan, IED review file or stock inventory).
Frequently asked questions
Can a drone fly over a steel plant while it is in production?
Yes, provided the mission is organised with the operator. The flight is an external observation, kept away from radiant heat sources and clear of casting areas, ladle transfer paths and vehicle traffic. The pre-flight briefing sets the time slots compatible with the melting and casting sequence, the no-overfly areas, the take-off point and the link with the control room and the crane operator. On many sites the trickiest passes are scheduled at the end of a cast or during a short maintenance window, without shutting the furnace down. This framing is part of the site's prevention plan and risk assessment : the operator authorises, supervises and suspends the flight if conditions change.
Does the drone replace a structural survey of a large-span shed?
No, and that limit needs stating up front. The steel frame of a casting bay carries loads that nothing reveals from the outside : cyclic thermal expansion, crane loads, corrosion under insulation, fatigue in the connections. The drone produces a dated external image — roofing defects, visible deformation of a ridge line, cladding corrosion, broken skylights — that raises flags and sets priorities. The structural survey remains the job of an engineering consultancy that reaches the joints, measures, calculates and takes responsibility. In the same way, the drone substitutes for no statutory periodic inspection : lifting equipment, electrical installations and pressure equipment are covered by separate regulatory checks.
Can drone thermography check an arc furnace or a dust-extraction system?
It reads the outer envelope only, and that is already useful : a temperature difference on primary dust-extraction ducting revealing lost insulation or a leaking joint, an abnormal hot spot on a cooling circuit, one cooling-tower cell running out of line with its neighbours, an external pipe run clearly out of step. It measures neither a bath temperature, nor a refractory thickness, nor a stack concentration. The measurements that count in regulatory terms — self-monitoring of air emissions, periodic checks by an accredited body — rely on devices and protocols that a drone-mounted camera never replaces.