Improvement of the yield of the iron and steel making (Clean Steel Partnership) (IA) -

Expected Outcome

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Validate at industrial test scale technologies for impurity removal from scrap or the recovery of metal fractions contained in steel making process residues (that are today mainly landfilled) reaching high recycling rate of residues originated at the demo site up to 40% achieving a metal recovery efficiency up to 90% and a mineral recovery efficiency up to 80%;
• Progressively increasing the uptake of low-quality scrap grades into high quality steel grades;
• Progressively replacing the use of pre-consumer scrap grades with high quality clean scrap grades;
• Progressively replacing the use of solid pig iron produced by traditional BF process with post-consumer grades;
• Reducing the environmental impact by minimizing CO2 emission up to 20% both, directly (and locally) by internal recycling of the metal fraction derived from residues, or indirectly by increasing the use of scrap as raw material in steelmaking production processes including:
  • the reduction of pig iron use the in the steelmaking process;
  • the use of alternative reducing agents as coal substitution, such as biomass, polymers, hydrogen;
  • the reduction of CO2 emission derived by extraction and transportation of natural resources as well as transportation and landfill of industrial waste;
  • the generation of CO2 neutral energy vector from chemical and sensible heat from pyro-metallurgical residue treatment processes allowing at least 5% reduction of specific energy consumption for a dedicated process.
• Develop novel technologies for onsite characterization (chemical and physical) of ferrous materials to help standardization of charge managing practice;
• Confirming the replicability of the demonstration plant in most of EU steel shops.

Relevant indicators and metrics, with baseline values, should be clearly stated in the proposal.

Scope

R&I areas that needs to be tackled should address some of these aspects:

• Selection and integration of best available and applicable technologies to reduce impurities in post-consumer scrap before melting together with scrap yard management supported by digital smart tools for scrap classification and charge optimization; these are key elements to increase the use of scrap achieving the same quality of the finished product in both, the EAF, and BF/BOF route and at the same time reducing CO2 emissions due to lower energy need with respect to iron-ore;
• Development, deployment, and use of smart sensor and dedicated Big Data analytics to develop and further optimize decision-supported systems for helping steel plant operators to increase the process yield and to improve the final steel product quality. The projects should ensure involvement of operators and process experts in development and implementation of Big Data, ensuring the uptake of human experiences and a user-friendly processing of results;
• Realisation of demonstration plants at relevant industrial scale focusing on material upgrading technologies (cleaning, size control) as well as inline characterization of ferrous materials via novel technologies for onsite characterization (chemical composition and physical properties);
• Development and implementation of highly efficient technologies for recovering metals and mineral fraction from steelmaking residues, including those coming from H2-based metallurgy ones, with high metallic or oxidic fractions; two possible ways are envisioned, whereas the first one is based on cooling and mechanical steps, such as wet or dry granulation followed by phase separation; the second one relies on a direct recycling of residues in existing production processes or in dedicated pyrometallurgic melting and reduction units;
• Full by-product testing and evaluation to have them covered by a standard like a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) or by a national technical agreement;
• Enabling the use of obtained by-products in higher value applications (i.e. filtering, coating, additive manufacturing, material for CO2 sequestration, heat accumulator);
• Integration of energy recovery solutions in metal recovery processes targeting at a better Return of Investment.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on Clean Steel.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement

Activities are expected to start at TRL 6 and achieve TRL 8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

Co-programmed European Partnerships

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