Over the past decade, the steel industry in Europe has been spending a lot of effort in Research and Development of technologies that help in achieving the EU’s CO2 emissions targets and reduce the cost of EU ETS compliance. That has been done through a combination of large scale projects which were part publicly funded with European funding and partly through smaller privately funded research activities. From the initial stages of feasibility studies, several technologies were put forward for further development, one of which is the HIsarna smelting reduction process The objective for the current proposal is to prove the capability of the HIsarna ironmaking technology to achieve at least 35% reduction in CO2 emission intensity, compared to blast furnace operated site based on Best Available Technology Currently Installed. This will be achieved through: -Change operation parameters in order to achieve at least 35% CO2 intensity reduction per tonne of hot rolled coil compared to the conventional blast furnace – BOF route through: >Combined iron ore and scrap operation with a scrap rate of 350kg/thm; >Partially replacing coal injection with sustainable biomass injection (at least 40%); >Minimising coal rate by maximising energy use in the reactor, through balancing the energy between the upper and lower part of the reactor (Using limestone instead of burnt lime as a fluxing agent; >Quantifying potential for energy recovery from hot off-gas by installing boiler test panels; >Making the process ‘CCS ready’ by having process gas suitable for CCS with little or no processing by replacing compressed air and N2 carrier gasses with CO2 and CH4 as carrier gas; -Operation of the HIsarna pilot plant for several months continuously in order to establish process and equipment stability; -Test process conditions and validate for scale up to 0.8 Mtpa plant

In the context of the energy transition, the interest for thermoelectric generators (TEG) is increasing, as they are able to tap into renewable or waste heat sources with very low impact. So far, wide-scale applicability of TE devices was limited by their low conversion efficiency, typically 5% at system level at the most. STARTREC will develop and evaluate a new generation of TEG based on the optimal combination of nanostructured Si85Ge15 thermoelectric materials with innovative device architectures designed by simulation: 1) Three different materials processing routes using nanostructuration to increase material performances: Additive Manufacturing (AM); Nanostructured Rapid Casting (Nano-RC); Optimized Rapid Casting (O-RC); 2) Innovative device architectures, such as complex forms and cascade architectures, which can considerably improve both their performance and their optimal temperature ranges, and so increase their efficiencies and potential for wider applications. STARTREC aims at doubling TEG efficiencies up to 10% at system level (15% at device level). It will demonstrate their high-performances in relevant environments at TRL5 for three different and complementary high impact use cases (industrial, domestic and space). Technical work will be completed by dedicated life cycle studies to address economic and environmental issues for these TEGs. A strong dissemination and exploitation strategy and novel circular business models will allow the developed solution to open new application opportunities in other sectors. With TEGs produced and commercialized by European industrial leaders, reinforcing EU strategic autonomy in renewable energy technologies, STARTREC has a complete value-chain with two RTOs, two universities, one technological SME and three industrial end-users. STARTREC will serve a global TEG market valued at 447.1 million in 2020 and forecasted to reach 1365.8 million by 2030.

Under the coordination of VERBUND, VOESTALPINE, a steel manufacturer, and SIEMENS, a PEM electrolyser manufacturer, propose a 26 month demonstration of the 6MW electrolysis power plant installed at the VOESTALPINE LINZ plant (Austria). After pilot plant commissioning, the electrolyser is prequalified with the support of APG, the transmission operator of Austria, in order to provide grid-balancing services such as primary, secondary or tertiary reserves while utilising the commercial pools of VERBUND. The demonstration is split into five pilot tests and the quasi-commercial operation to show that the PEM electrolyser is able both to use timely power price opportunities (in order to provide affordable hydrogen for current uses of the steel making processes), and to attract extra revenues from grid services which improves the hydrogen price attractiveness from a two-carrier utility like VERBUND. Replicability of the experimental results at larger scales in EU28 for the steel industry (with inputs from TSOs in Italy, Spain and the Netherlands) is studied under the coordination of ECN. It involves a technical, economic and environmental assessment of the experimental results using the CertifHY tools. The roll out of each result is provided by ECN, together with policy and regulatory recommendations to accelerate the deployment in the steel and fertilizer industry, with low CO2 hydrogen streams provided also by electrolysing units using renewable electricity. The plausibility of this roadmap is reinforced at the on-start of the demonstration by the creation of an exploitation company involving the core industrial partners, which starts commercial operations of the Linz pilot plant right after the end of the demonstration. Dissemination targeting the European stakeholders of the electricity, steel and fertilizer value chain nourishes the preparation of the practical implementation of the results in the 10 years following the demonstration’s end.

Each year the EU steel sector generates several million tons of metal and mineral containing residues that are currently largely under-exploited and are often sent to landfills with an enormous waste of resources that could replace virgin materials. ReMFra main objective is the development and validation of highly efficient pyrometallurgic melting and reduction demonstration plant at relevant industrial scale for recovering metals and minerals contained in a wide range of steelmaking residues. The ReMFra process will allow to valorise steelmaking residues, such as filter dust, scale, sludge and slags, to obtain pig iron, iron rich oxides, a highly concentrated zinc oxide and an inert slag. ReMFra comprises two main parts to be developed, improved and tested at industrial scale: Plasma Reactor and RecoDust. The first will be dedicated to recover the coarse residues (scale, sludge, slag), while the second will focus on fine-grained dusts. The project will allow the improvement of iron yield using recovered pig iron instead of new pig iron and replacing the iron ore with the iron rich oxide. The recovery of concentrated ZnO and inert slag as by-products will provide a significant source of income and will contribute to the overall carbon neutrality. To reach the full circularity, the process foresees the use, as reducing agent, of secondary carbon sources (i.e. waste plastics). Energy recovery solutions will also be integrated in the metal recovery process starting from enabling the use of molten pig iron. ReMFra consortium comprises: 5 steelmaking companies, 4 RTOs as technology providers with large experience in steel sector, 1 university and the European Steel Technology Platform. To conclude, ReMFra is expected not only to enable technological advances in the demonstrators involved but will also contribute to the development of new standards, training programmes, adaptation and certification of industrial processes thus facilitating the replication of the project.

The INEVITABLE Innovative Action aims to realize a fully digitalized monitoring technology for an optimized and improved performance of manufacturing processes. Use cases from the energy and resource intensive sectors steel and nonferrous metals are addressed, whereas the considered manufacturing sites are in Slovenia, Austria and Spain covering primary and secondary steelmaking and investment casting of nonferrous metal alloys. The focus of INEVITABLE is to develop high-level supervisory control systems for different production plants and on the demonstration in operational environment (TRL 7) to enable autonomous operation of the processes based on embedded cognitive reasoning. Key Performance Indicators will be defined related to resource consumption and product qualities. Based on that, a full digital transformation of the plants will be done including acquisition, storage, processing and analytics of data streams, furthermore, communication and automation, and finally, standardization of relevant data interfaces. Predictive models will be developed being combined with smart and networked sensor technologies to correlate process parameters with quality indicators of the manufactured products. The models will be tested in offline mode on the one hand, and in online mode on the other hand by means of comprehensive plant trials at the industrial partner sites. Dissemination activities will transfer the knowledge throughout the SPIRE sectors. The industrial partners are supported by scientific partners with excellent competences in the field of digitalization. INEVITABLE will improve the capabilities for reliable and real-time control logics of final product properties and process efficiency to increase the flexibility of plant operators. Improved and flexible production performance is expected with a simultaneous reduction of resource consumption and CO2 emissions contributing to a more competitive and sustainable metallurgic industry within the EU.