Today, the European Union?s steel sector is a modern industry with its main customer base found within the EU home markets, particularly in high-end segments. However, challenges remain to keep the EU steel sector both competitive at a global level and climate-neutral, in line with the European Green Deal and the CleanSteel Partnership?s vision. The scrap usage in steelmaking is a common practice to improve the process? sustainability, as it decreases the use of virgin raw materials and boosts the circularity of the sector (decreasing CO2 emissions and electivity consumption). Nevertheless, the current trend in the EU scrap market points at a slight decrease in the pre-consumer scrap and an increase in the short- and long-term of the post-consumer scrap stream, due to an increase in steel consumption. Nowadays, these ?low-quality? scrap streams are not suitable for most applications, thus limiting their use in steelmaking. In order to increase the steel scrap recycling capacity and energy efficiency, while keeping EU competitive and safe in terms of raw materials imports, energy consumption and climate change impact, innovative technologies to ?clean? the scrap before it reaches the steel furnaces need to be implemented. CAESAR gathers up steelmakers, technology developers and research centers in a joint effort to validate, at full-size industrial scale, integrated scrap upgrading, sorting and characterization technologies, thus enabling to untap volumes of low-quality scrap streams in Europe, while keeping a high-quality product and generating valorization routes for all the non-ferrous fractions obtained, towards a zero waste steel sector.

The ACHIEF project will develop novel efficient materials-based solutions enabling to meet extreme and fluctuating conditions currently employed in Energy Intensive Industries (EII) through the utilization of an Artificial Intelligent combined Modelling approach for the design of innovative materials and protective coatings with improved high-temperature strength, creep and corrosion characteristics. The ACHIEF proposal addresses the following ambitious objectives: - Develop innovative high-temperature strength and creep resistance materials based on novel High-Entropy Alloys (HEAs) for improved performance of EII, - Develop novel protective Polymer Derived Ceramic coatings with improved high-temperature erosion and corrosion resistance, - Develop high performance coatings based on HEA-nanocomposites with improved high-temperature wear and thermal fatigue resistance, - Design and develop a new high Chromium steel grade with creep resistance 15% improved and - Implement advanced high-performance temperature sensors based on Fiber Bragg Grating technology and corrosion sensors based on Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy technique. ACHIEF is a multidisciplinary project engaging 11 EU partners (2 being an SME) from 7 countries covering the RTO and industrial worlds. An implementation plan is presented in the form of 9 work packages, 6 of which are technical in nature. Synergy in communication and dissemination by the several partners and stakeholders will permit to maximize the ACHIEF project impact. Solutions to overcome the fundamental technological barriers as well as appropriate deliverables, tasks, milestones and risks in order to complete the project objectives in due time are presented. The EII industrial sector will be highly impacted by the ACHIEF project outcomes which are fully in line with the H2020 LC-SPIRE-08-2020 call: significant energy efficiency improvement, reduction of CO2 emissions and resource utilization, increased lifetime of the equipment.

The RESLAG project proposal is aligned with the challenges outlined in the call WASTE-1-2014: Moving towards a circular economy through industrial symbiosis. In 2010, the European steel industry generated, as waste, about 21.8 Mt of steel slag. The 76 % of the slag was recycled in applications such as aggregates for construction or road materials, but these sectors were unable to absorb the total amount of produced slag. The remaining 24 % was landfilled (2.9 Mt) or self-stored (2.3 Mt). The landfilled slag represents a severe environmental problem. The main aim of RESLAG is to prove that there are industrial sectors able to make an effective use of the 2.9 Mt/y of landfilled slag, if properly supported by the right technologies. In making this prof, the RESLAG project will also prove that there are other very important environmental benefits coming from an “active” use of the slag in industrial processes, as CO2 saving (up to 970 kt/y from CSP applications, at least 71 kg/ton of produced steel from heat recovery applications), and elimination of negative impacts associated with mining (from the recovery of valuable metals and from the production of ceramic materials). To achieve this ambitious goal four large-scale demonstrations to recycle steel slag are considered: Extraction of non-ferrous high added metals; TES for heat recovery applications; TES to increase dispatchability of the CSP plant electricity; Production of innovative refractory ceramic compounds. Overall, the RESLAG project aims at an innovative organizational steel by-products management model able to reach high levels of resource and energy efficiency, which considers a cascade of upgrading processes and a life cycle perspective. All these demonstrations will be lead by the industries involved in the RESLAG consortium. The RESLAG project is supported by the main organizations representing energy-intensive industries, CSP sector, energy platforms, governments, etc.

The main objective of HyInHeat is the integration of hydrogen as fuel for high temperature heating processes in the energy intensive industries. While some of the equipment is already presented as hydrogen-ready, the integration of hydrogen combustion in heating processes still needs adoption and redesign of infrastructure, equipment and the process itself. HyInHeat realizes the implementation of efficient hydrogen combustion systems to decarbonize heating and melting processes of the aluminium and steel sectors, covering almost their complete process chains. To reach this overarching objective within the project, furnace and equipment like burners or measurement and control technology but also infrastructure is redesigned, modified and implemented in eight demonstrators at technical centres and industrial plants. Besides hydrogen-air heating, oxygen-enriched combustion and hydrogen-oxyfuel heating is implemented to boost energy efficiency and to decrease the future hydrogen fuel demand of the processes. This might result in a total redesign of the heating process itself which will be supported by simulation methods enhancing digitalisation along the value chain. Since critical production processes are converted, it is a fundamental requirement to maintain product quality and yield. Priority is also given to the refractory lining to prove sustainability. From an environmental perspective, new concepts for NOx emission measurement in hydrogen combustion off-gas are developed. Material flow analysis and life cycle analysis methods will support the comprehensive cross-sectorial evaluation, which allows the determination of the potential for the implementation of hydrogen heating processes in energy intensive industry. With these activities, HyInHeat contributes to the objectives of decreasing CO2 emission of the processes while increasing energy efficiency in a cost competitive way keeping NOx emission levels and resource efficiency at least at the same level.