The EU is the second lar­gest steel pro­du­cer in the world with 150 Mt per year, out of a world pro­duc­tion of 1900 Mt per year. The EU steel indus­try alo­ne is respon­si­ble for 221 Mt of green­house gas emis­si­ons per year, inclu­ding direct and indi­rect emis­si­ons, or 5.7% of total EU emis­si­ons. To meet the ambi­ti­ons of the Euro­pean Green Deal, the steel indus­try must adapt and trans­form its­elf to remain com­pe­ti­ti­ve. Over the past 30 years, the EU steel indus­try has alre­a­dy redu­ced its emis­si­ons by more than 25% by impro­ving ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and incre­asing recy­cling. Howe­ver, to achie­ve cli­ma­te neu­tra­li­ty by 2050, the steel indus­try needs to step up its efforts to make its pro­ces­ses more effi­ci­ent, more fle­xi­ble and tech­no­lo­gi­cal­ly advan­ced to redu­ce its envi­ron­men­tal impact and impro­ve pro­duct quality.

The objec­ti­ve of the dis­se­mi­na­ti­on pro­ject DissHEAT is to pro­vi­de a com­pre­hen­si­ve review of the most important Euro­pean RFCS and Hori­zon pro­jects, as well as inter­na­tio­nal lite­ra­tu­re rela­ted to “hea­ting tech­no­lo­gy rese­arch results for emis­si­on mini­miza­ti­on and pro­cess opti­miza­ti­on towards today’s fos­sil-free hea­ting agen­da” in the field of down­stream steel pro­ces­sing over the last 25 years. By con­duc­ting this review and ana­ly­sis, the aim is to pro­vi­de valuable insights into suc­cessful past tech­no­lo­gies and their poten­ti­al for trans­fera­bi­li­ty, which can be appli­ed to cur­rent and future green steel pro­ces­sing. This will con­tri­bu­te to the over­all goal of redu­cing green­house gas emis­si­ons and impro­ving the sus­taina­bi­li­ty of the steel industry.

Dischar­ging of a slab in the pla­te mill rehea­ting fur­nace [Source: worlds­teel association]

Five dif­fe­rent topics have been iden­ti­fied to eva­lua­te and clas­si­fy the rese­arch results. Each pro­ject part­ner is respon­si­ble for one of the­se topics and will clas­si­fy the fin­dings and results of the cor­re­spon­ding lite­ra­tu­re to high­light their impact and rele­van­ce for a future rese­arch road­map in steel processing.

The five topics include:

• Hea­ting and bur­ner tech­no­lo­gy; alter­na­ti­ve hea­ting methods; elec­tri­cal heating
• Mea­su­re­ment and sen­sors, mea­su­re­ment-based fur­nace con­trol (level 1); stan­dards, regulations
• Model­ling of enti­re fur­nace, model based pre­dic­ti­ve con­trol (level 2)
• Mate­ri­als in the fur­nace and pro­duct quality
• Heat trans­fer, heat reco­very, pro­duc­ti­vi­ty, economy

The pro­ject will pro­vi­de a tho­rough ana­ly­sis of the cur­rent sta­te of the art for each topic, inclu­ding a review of the Best Available Tech­no­lo­gy report for the Fer­rous Metals Pro­ces­sing Indus­try. Based on this ana­ly­sis, a cross-the­ma­tic BAT approach will be deve­lo­ped. The fin­dings and ana­ly­sis will be shared and dis­cus­sed with indus­try and rese­arch experts during the DissHEAT-semi­nar-series sche­du­led for May 2023. A work­shop will be orga­nis­ed on the 15^th of June 2023 at ESTAD in Düs­sel­dorf to dis­cuss the rese­arch gaps and pro­vi­de a final road­map for future rese­arch needs in the field of indus­tri­al hea­ting for the steel indus­try. All the results will be repor­ted in the pro­ject deliverables.

Pro­ject struc­tu­re of DissHEAT