The General Assembly Meeting of the European HyInHeat project took place in Donostia-San Sebastián on 7 and 8 November 2023. Together with the broad-based consortium from industry and science, the Department for Industrial Furnaces and Heat Engineering (IOB) is working on the decarbonization of the steel and aluminium industry through the use of hydrogen. For the first time since the kick-off meeting in Aachen at the beginning of the year, the consortium met in the Basque Country in northern Spain to discuss the project’s progress. IOB was represented by our colleagues Thomas Echterhof, Nico Schmitz, Lukas Sankowski, Alex Garcia Vergara, Andrés Ramírez Sánchez and Johannes Losacker.
In the congress centre of the Euskadiko Parke Teknologikoa technology park, the new project partner ArcelorMittal Olaberria was first welcomed. IOB as project coordinator and the organizers Tecnalia and Ceit then led through the project’s work packages in several presentation sessions. The first work package – process analysis and retrofitting requirements – was already completed in project month nine and submitted to the EU in the form of reports. Consequently, it formed a focal point in the presentations of the project’s progress. IOB contributed in the areas of life cycle assessment and material flow analysis as well as preliminary work on new measurement technologies and nitrogen oxide emission limits. In this context, the first peer-reviewed paper of the project “NOx Emission Limits in a Fuel-Flexible and Defossilized Industry — Quo Vadis” was presented, in which new, necessary definitions for the assessment of NOx emissions are presented. In addition, work on the topic of thermal radiation modelling in numerical simulations was presented.
The following presentations focussed on the work packages already underway to modify the equipment and processes, the design of safe infrastructure for the use of hydrogen and the instrumentation and algorithms for measurement and control. During the breaks, there was the opportunity for personal dialogue with the project partners, in which questions and further ideas were discussed in more detail. Once the official programme of the first day had ended, the participants moved on to the evening programme, which began with a guided tour of the historic centre of San Sebastian. Divided into smaller groups, the guests were introduced to the special features of the Basque language, architecture and cuisine before local dishes were served over dinner.
Once the progress of the project had been covered in terms of content, administrative issues and public relations work were discussed on the following day. In addition, the EU-funded H2Glass project, which is the counterpart to HyInHeat in the glass industry, was presented. The project coordinators provided an overview in order to identify overlaps and potential synergies. The afternoon was filled with extensive tours through the laboratories of the organisers Tecnalia and Ceit, where the equipment for hydrogen production and detailed metallurgical tests could be inspected.
While half of the IOB team traveled home the next day, colleagues from the combustion group took the opportunity to visit the steelworks of partner Arcelormittal in nearby Gijon. There they visited the test rigs for direct and indirect heating using radiant heating tubes in order to coordinate the procedure for the numerical simulations of the test rigs.
We would like to thank our project partners Tecnalia, Ceit and Arcelormittal for their hospitality and for organising the visit.
