TWINGHY: Digital TWINs for Green HYdrogen transition in steel industry

In the EU-fun­ded rese­arch pro­ject TWINGHY — Digi­tal TWINs for Green HYdro­gen tran­si­ti­on in steel indus­try — the decar­bo­niza­ti­on of the rehea­ting pro­cess in the steel indus­try is demons­tra­ted. To this end, two hybrid natu­ral gas-hydro­gen bur­ners for com­bus­ti­on with air and oxy­fuel are deve­lo­ped and instal­led in a rehea­ting fur­nace tog­e­ther with the requi­red infra­struc­tu­re. An addi­tio­nal focus is on the digi­ta­liza­ti­on of the pro­cess. In the cour­se of the pro­ject, digi­tal twins of two rehea­ting fur­naces will be deve­lo­ped. A data-dri­ven approach and a phy­si­cal­ly based approach will be pur­sued and com­pared even­tual­ly. In order to feed the digi­tal twins with data, the mea­su­re­ment tech­no­lo­gy of the fur­naces will be expan­ded and sup­ple­men­ted by com­pre­hen­si­ve CFD simulations.

Con­sor­ti­um of the rese­arch project

The broad-based con­sor­ti­um is made up of part­ners from indus­try, rese­arch insti­tu­tes and uni­ver­si­ties. The indus­tri­al-sca­le fur­nace demons­tra­tors are pro­vi­ded by the steel pro­du­cers Cel­sa Group and SSAB. The hybrid bur­ner for com­bus­ti­on with air is deve­lo­ped by fur­nace manu­fac­tu­rer Fives. Gas sup­pli­er Nip­pon Gases is sup­p­ly­ing a new bur­ner for firing with pure oxy­gen and is buil­ding the neces­sa­ry infra­struc­tu­re for hydro­gen and oxy­gen sup­p­ly at the site. The cor­re­spon­ding acti­vi­ties are coor­di­na­ted by pro­ject coor­di­na­tor Cel­sa, in who­se wal­king beam fur­nace the rese­arch work has to be recon­ci­led with the day-to-day pro­duc­tion cycle. IOB is car­ry­ing out mea­su­re­ment cam­paigns befo­re and after the retro­fit of Celsa’s fur­nace in order to quan­ti­fy the effects on the pro­cess. The data obtai­ned will be used to set up and vali­da­te effi­ci­ent RANS-CFD simu­la­ti­ons of indi­vi­du­al bur­ners and the enti­re fur­nace. The high-reso­lu­ti­on bench­mark for the­se simu­la­ti­ons is pro­vi­ded by the Bar­ce­lo­na Super­com­pu­ting Cen­ter (BSC) in the form of lar­ge-eddy simu­la­ti­ons. The data from regu­lar ope­ra­ti­on and addi­tio­nal mea­su­re­ments also help the BSC to model the pro­cess using neu­ral net­works. The data-dri­ven digi­tal twin obtai­ned in this way is com­pared with a fini­te ele­ment pro­cess model deri­ved by Swe­rim from the phy­si­cal laws gover­ning heat trans­fer. In par­al­lel to the deve­lo­p­ments, the influen­ces of the fuel chan­ge on the refrac­to­ry are ana­ly­zed by the Insti­tu­te of Mine­ral Engi­nee­ring at RWTH Aachen Uni­ver­si­ty (GHI) and the refrac­to­ry manu­fac­tu­rer Cal­derys. In the cour­se of this, labo­ra­to­ry tri­als are con­duc­ted with mate­ri­al samples expo­sed to the alte­red con­di­ti­ons with regard to the increased water con­tent in the fur­nace cham­ber and local­ly chan­ged tem­pe­ra­tures. Samples are also intro­du­ced in the fur­nace to coll­ect data on the real demons­tra­tor. In addi­ti­on to the refrac­to­ry, the pro­duct also expe­ri­en­ces the alte­red atmo­sphe­re in the fur­nace cham­ber. Cor­re­spon­ding tests are car­ri­ed out at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu to ensu­re that the chan­ge in fuel does not affect pro­duct quality.

Mea­su­re­ment cam­pain at the rehea­ting fur­nace at the Cel­sa 3 steelworks