The aim of E-ECO Downstream is to enable a clean steel production by developing advanced and breakthrough technologies for the steel making downstream processes. This will decisively support the EU in achieving its goal towards climate neutrality by 2050. E-ECO Downstream focuses on the efficient utilization of hydrogen, biogas, and electricity to substitute carbon-based fuels and drastically lower the carbon footprint of the steel production. Energy efficiency is pursued to enable sustainable utilization of volatile green energy. Currently installed burners of reheating furnaces will be enabled to utilize green H2 by integration of newly designed and 3D-printed burner components instead of replacing entire burner systems. To increase fuel flexibility hybrid heating concepts (H2 and electricity) will be investigated in a pilot walking beam furnace. Since the mentioned solutions will change the waste heat streams and their heat recovery in future downstream processes must be reevaluated. This will be done by analysing the partners processes and plants, development and testing of waste heat recovery concepts and recuperators regarding their suitability to new fuels and their off gases, while considering their impact on materials/product. Energy efficiency potentials of downstream processes will be evaluated by case studies for the application of hot charge from casting to hot rolling by covering of the slabs with passive and active panels. The elaborated solutions will be assessed by techno-eco-environmental analysis to evaluate their applicability and to increase their acceptance in the steel community. The E-ECO Downstream consortium has a deep and shared knowledge of iron and steel making, downstream processes and heating technology, materials engineering, numerical simulation, experimental investigations, economy, and life cycle analysis.

EAF steelmaking is the key technology for decarbonised steelmaking, either in scrap-based plant by modification of existing processes for further decarbonisation, or as new EAF installations in decarbonised integrated steel works to (partly) replace the classical BF-BOF production. At same time the EAF is the most important example for modular and hybrid heating, already now combining electric arc heating with burner technologies. Consequently, it was selected as main focus of GreenHeatEAF for the Call „Modular and hybrid heating technologies in steel production“. GreenHeatEAF develops and demonstrates the most important decarbonisation approaches at EAFs including the use of hydrogen to replace natural gas combustion in existing or re-vamped burners or innovative technologies like CoJet. Furthermore, decarbonisation of EAF steelmaking by solid materials like DRI/HBI and renewable carbon sources like biochar is tackled. Technologies to re-optimise the heating management with maximum heat recovery of off-gas and slag employing new sensor and soft-sensor concepts as well as extended digital twins are developed: as result the extended CFD and flowsheeting models, and monitoring and control tools will prognose the influences of the different decarbonisation measures on EAF and process chain to support upcoming decarbonisation investments and to enable the control of decarbonised hybrid heating with maximum energy efficiency. GreenHeatEAF combines trials in demonstration scale, e.g. in combustion- and EAF-demo plants, with validations in industrial scale and digital optimisations with high synergy. Thus, it completely follows the Horizon Twin Transition and Clean Steel Partnership objectives and the target to progress decarbonisation technologies from TRL 5 to 7. This synergic concept of GreenHeatEAF supports implementation and digitisation to speed up the transition of the European steel industry to highly competitive energy-efficient decarbonised steel productio

Currently, NG is normally substituted by hydrogen in upstream processes (both blast furnace and DRI), or limited application in finishing lines. Current downstream processes totally rely on NG burning as thermal source. Therefore, the massive usage of hydrogen in steel industry, as envisioned in the Carbon Direct Avoidance pathway of the ESTEP/EUROFER masterplan, requires a transformation of entire steelmaking process from liquid production process (UPSTREAM) to the rolling and finishing line (DOWNSTREAM). This research project is aimed at adopting hybrid heating technology (based on NG with progressive and increasing H2 utilization) in downstream processes. Thermal treatment and reheating processes, which are common to both BF and EAF route have a significant NG demand (about 50 Nm3/t of produced steel). also utilization for ladle preheating has a relevant NG demand (in the range 5-15 Nm3/t). In order to allow the shift from NG to H2 and consequently to reduce the environmental impact by using innovative combustion technologies (like flameless and oxyfuel combustion), impacts on steel quality, refractory and furnace must be assessed at high TRL (7). The general objective of this project is to exploit the hybrid heating technologies by evaluating the effects of the steel products, on the refractories and also on the combustion systems. Three Demo cases testing innovative multifuel burner and testing the limit of current systems at TRL 7 will facilitate the hydrogen transition of the steel sector. Achieved results will bring to a CO2 saving in the range 7.5-25Mt/year. Regarding the steel quality, the project activities will individuate the optimum processing parameters to ensure that primary scale and associated scale defects do not persist through to the final product.

ProcTwin aims to develop a demonstration platform to predict and visualize best use of multiple processing steps in a steel manufacturing chain. The methodology includes intelligent coupling of interconnected processing steps by numerical simulation, soft sensors, process data and distributed machine learning. Integrated numerical modelling that captures the interactions, relations, and feedback loops between various processing stations enables prediction for smart optimization of energy efficiency and product quality in the steel manufacturing. Continuous casting, reheating, hot metal working, quenching and leveling processes are examples that are controlled separately but strongly interconnected in terms of parameters. These processes serve as objective functions in two parallel use cases at Celsa (ES) and SSAB (SW). It is well known that process optimization can have a significant effect on reducing carbon footprint in steel production, and implementing new digital tools will enable a faster transition towards sustainable industry. ProcTwin is divided in clear work packages to reach the objectives: one is adaption of existing physically based numerical models of each process step to generate critical data that is impossible to measure or observe. Another is development of novel sensors and data integration for a secure and effective sharing industrial data. The innovative concept of ProcTwin is development of distributed machine learning to predict the process chains with large amounts of parameters. Lastly, these technologies will be combined through a demonstrator platform to model the manufacturing processes and enable control for increased product quality, energy efficiency and operator support.

The main objective of H2PlasmaRed is to develop hydrogen plasma smelting reduction (HPSR) technology for the reduction of iron ores and steelmaking sidestreams to meet the targets of the European Green Deal for reducing CO2 emissions and supporting the circular economy in the steel industry across Europe. Our ambition is to introduce a near CO2-free reduction process to support the goal of the Paris Agreement - a 90% reduction in the carbon intensity of steel production by 2050. To achieve this, H2PlasmaRed will develop HPSR from TRL5 to TRL7 by demonstrating the HPSR in a pilot-HPSR reactor (hundred-kilogram-scale) that is an integrated part of a steel plant, and in a pilot-scale DC electric arc furnace (5-ton scale) by retrofitting the existing furnace. The project's end goal is to establish a way to upscale the process from pilot-scale into industrial practice. To support this goal, the novel sensors and models developed and implemented in the project are used for HPSR process optimization from a reduction, resource, and energy efficiency standpoint.