Our colleagues Lilly Schulte and Carsten Gondorf visited our project partner Pittini in the northern Italian city of Udine from October 1st to 2nd, 2024 for the next project meeting of the RFCS-funded project “DevH2forEAF”. The project is investigating the possible use of hydrogen-powered burners in electric arc furnaces (EAF).
This project meeting focused on the upcoming industrial trials at Pittini. In these trials, one of the 3 MW burners in the EAF will be replaced by the burner developed in this project, which is capable of using natural gas and hydrogen as well as mixtures of both fuel gases. For the use of hydrogen as a fuel gas, some preliminary work had to be carried out by the project partner Nippon Gases, from approvals to the expansion of a hydrogen feed line from a mobile hydrogen trailer to the burner. Over the next few months, the burner developed will be tested in normal furnace operation with different fuel compositions. The influences on furnace operation will then be examined by us as IOB, among others.
The upcoming burner trials at Pittini were taken as an opportunity to bring all project partners together on site and discuss the progress of the ongoing project. Each project partner summarized the current work, which mainly related to the preparation of the industrial trials, be it the final installation of the burner or the hydrogen safety line. The focus of the IOB was on preliminary tests for the planned industrial trials. As a preliminary test, a scaled-down version of the burner (to 50 kW) was installed and tested in the IOB’s pilot EAF in July. The results show no negative effect on furnace operation and allow the industrial trials to be carried out.
After the discussion of the current results, a tour of the plant was a must. Here, all the previously presented preparations for the operating tests could be viewed. The EAF, the central part of the steel plant, was particularly impressive. Here, several hundred tons of scrap are melted into raw iron every hour and fed directly to the adjacent continuous casting line.
At a concluding social dinner, the project partners were able to get to know each other better over excellent food and delicious wine and also discuss interesting topics outside of the project.