Project overview

CO2 reduction and energy efficiency

Safe H-DRI - Safe trans­port of DRI from H2-based dir­ect re­duc­tion con­sid­er­ing qual­ity-re­lated H-DRI re­act­iv­ity, sta­bil­ity, the ef­fi­ciency of pas­siv­a­tion meth­ods and health and re­cyc­ling as­pects

The pro­ject fo­cuses on over­com­ing key chal­lenges in the safe hand­ling, trans­port and stor­age of H-DRI and min­im­iz­ing risks such as self-heat­ing, ig­ni­tion and ex­plo­sions. By re­search­ing in­nov­at­ive pas­siv­a­tion meth­ods and the reuse of H-DRI fines, safety, sus­tain­ab­il­ity and ef­fi­ciency shall be im­proved through­out the steel­mak­ing value chain.

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FeEn­Cap - En­cap­su­lated iron ma­ter­i­als for new type of iron slurry/air bat­ter­ies

The in­creas­ing ex­pan­sion of wind and solar power is lead­ing to strong fluc­tu­ations in the amount of en­ergy fed into the elec­tri­city grids. Pumped stor­age power plants are only avail­able re­gion­ally as elec­tric­al en­ergy stor­age fa­cil­it­ies to sta­bil­ise the grids. Lith­i­um-ion or va­na­dium redox stor­age sys­tems are com­par­at­ively ex­pens­ive for sta­tion­ary en­ergy stor­age and/or use toxic bat­tery ma­ter­i­als.

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SCI4cli­mate.NRW - Sci­entif­ic sup­port of the cli­mate-neut­ral trans­form­a­tion of in­dustry

SCI4cli­mate.NRW stands for the sci­entif­ic mon­it­or­ing of in­dus­tri­al trans­form­a­tion. It ana­lyzes trans­form­a­tion paths for the cli­mate-neut­ral con­ver­sion of in­dustry in Ger­many: What tech­no­lo­gies are avail­able and what pre­requis­ites and new in­fra­struc­tures does the trans­ition need? What con­tri­bu­tion can the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy make? And how can poli­cy­makers sup­port the trans­ition? North Rhine-West­phalia serves as a model re­gion in this pro­cess - this al­lows re­search ques­tions to be dealt with in an ap­plic­a­tion-ori­ented and con­crete man­ner.

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H2II - Hy­dro­gen se­quence im­pulse in­jec­tion into the Blast Fur­nace shaft

CO2 emis­sions in the steel in­dustry must be re­duced by 55% by 2030. But new tech­no­logy routes will not have been im­ple­men­ted to this ex­tent by then. There­fore rap­idly de­ploy­able in­ter­im tech­no­lo­gies are es­sen­tial.

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H2Trans­B­F2030 - Min­im­isa­tion of CO2 Emis­sions from the BF by hy­dro­gen con­tain­ing in­ject­ants and use of HBI dur­ing trans­ition to new Iron­mak­ing pro­cesses until 2030

Tar­gets set by the EU re­quire a 55% de­crease of CO2 emis­sions until 2030. Steel pro­du­cers have pub­lished roadmaps on how to reach this ob­ject­ive. But due to the ini­tially lim­ited avail­ab­il­ity of green elec­tri­city and hy­dro­gen these roadmaps as a ne­ces­sity still in­clude hot metal pro­duc­tion by blast fur­naces, even bey­ond 2030.

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Syn­Er­gie3 - Syn­chron­ized and en­ergy-ad­apt­ive pro­duc­tion tech­no­logy for the flex­ible align­ment of in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses to a fluc­tu­at­ing en­ergy sup­ply

Con­sid­er­able ef­forts are re­quired to adapt in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses to a fluc­tu­at­ing sup­ply of elec­tric­al en­ergy from re­new­able sources. Solu­tions for the ef­fi­cient and re­li­able use of elec­tric­al en­ergy as an al­tern­at­ive to the use of fossil fuels must be de­veloped, par­tic­u­larly for ef­forts to de­car­bon­ize thermal pro­cesses.

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H2-Ho­tRoll - Avoid­ance of CO2 emis­sions in the steel in­dustry by util­iz­ing of hy­dro­gen in con­tinu­ous ther­mo­pro­cess plants on the ex­ample of re­heat­ing fur­naces

To avoid en­ergy-re­lated CO2 emis­sions, the nat­ur­al gas used in thermal pro­cessing plants with tem­per­at­ures of around 1,300 °C can be re­placed by hy­dro­gen. The use of H2 re­quires a suit­able hy­dro­gen sup­ply in­fra­struc­ture.

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Sel­GaKat - Meth­od for in­creas­ing the en­ergy ef­fi­ciency by se­lect­ive gas qual­ity meas­ure­ment tak­ing into ac­count the hy­dro­gen con­tent using a cata­lyt­ic ref­er­ence com­bus­tion cham­ber

Com­bus­tion con­trol is cru­cial for the op­tim­um op­er­a­tion of in­dus­tri­al com­bus­tion pro­cesses, such as thermal pro­cess plants, gas tur­bines and CHP units. The amount of heat sup­plied and the com­bus­tion air ratio are im­port­ant con­trol vari­ables here, for which know­ledge of the gas prop­er­ties (Wobbe index, cal­or­if­ic value, min­im­um air re­quire­ment) is usu­ally re­quired.

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AMIG­DALA - Al­li­ance for Mod­el­ling In­dus­tries to­wards the Green Deal’s ob­ject­ives And cir­cu­LAr­ity

The EU Green Deal aims to reach cli­mate neut­ral­ity by 2050. Mov­ing away from fossil re­sources is ne­ces­sary to achieve this goal but im­plies an un­pre­ced­en­ted trans­form­a­tion of the en­ergy sys­tem and of al­most the en­tire basic pro­cess in­dustry.

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BeRe­fCo - Op­er­a­tion­al test­ing of a re­flect­ive fur­nace wall coat­ing and de­term­in­a­tion of the in­flu­ence on en­ergy re­quire­ments and CO2 emis­sions

In this pro­ject the trans­fer­ab­il­ity of the res­ults from the pre­vi­ous pro­ject ‘VeRef­Co’ from a pilot plant to an in­dus­tri­al fur­nace will be proved.

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MemKoWI – Mem­brane pro­cesses for the sep­ar­a­tion of car­bon di­ox­ide and hy­dro­gen from in­dus­tri­al gases

Pro­cess gases or com­bus­tion gases from the steel in­dustry, for ex­ample, con­tain many gas com­pon­ents such as H2 or CO2, which should be util­ized from an en­vir­on­ment­al, en­ergy and eco­nom­ic point of view.

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DRI-smelt­er – Novel pro­cess for the pro­duc­tion of pig iron by melt­ing sponge iron from dir­ect re­duc­tion in a DRI smelt­er

The ob­ject­ive of the pro­ject, which is fun­ded by the state of North Rhine-West­phalia and star­ted in Decem­ber 2022, is to de­vel­op a novel pro­cess to pro­duce pig iron by melt­ing sponge iron from dir­ect re­duc­tion in a DRI smelt­er.

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Re­In­vent – Re­duc­tion of green­house gases

Ac­cord­ing to the Ger­man gov­ern­ment's cli­mate pro­tec­tion plan, the aim is for Ger­many to achieve green­house gas neut­ral­ity by 2045. In­dustry cur­rently gen­er­ates around 20% of green­house gas emis­sions in Ger­many.

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HY­DREAMS - Clean hy­dro­gen com­bus­tion and di­git­al tools for re­heat­ing and heat treat­ment for steel

The latest IEA roadmap states that glob­al CO2 emis­sions from the iron and steel in­dustry will fall from 2.4 Gt in 2020 to 0.2 Gt in 2050, des­pite a doub­ling of pro­duc­tion. In ad­di­tion to blast fur­naces and elec­tric arc fur­naces, re­heat­ing, an­neal­ing and for­ging of steel are the main con­trib­ut­ors to emis­sions. Hy­dro­gen (H2) pro­duced with re­new­able en­er­gies could be a solu­tion to re­place nat­ur­al gas if its cost could be re­duced, if plant safety and product qual­ity re­main con­stant, and if an in­fra­struc­ture for pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­bu­tion and stor­age is de­veloped.

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Dis­sHEAT – Dis­sem­in­a­tion of the heat­ing tech­no­logy re­search res­ults for emis­sion min­im­iz­a­tion and pro­cess op­tim­iz­a­tion to­wards todays fossil-free heat­ing agenda

Over the past 30 years, the steel in­dustry has re­duced their emis­sions by over 25% and is aim­ing for cli­mate neut­ral­ity by 2050 to meet the am­bi­tions of the European Green Deal.

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In­TEG­rated – De­vel­op­ment of in­nov­at­ive TEG sys­tems

A huge amount of waste heat oc­curs dur­ing steel mak­ing pro­cesses which is given un­used to the en­vir­on­ment. Using these waste heat could be a step to a cli­mate neut­ral steel pro­duc­tion.

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In­noGuss – De­vel­op­ment of in­nov­at­ive trans­form­a­tion paths for the de­car­bon­iz­a­tion of the foundry in­dustry in NRW

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment aims to re­duce the GHG emis­sions in Ger­many by at least 55% by 2030 and to achieve green­house gas neut­ral­ity for Ger­many by 2050.

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AeroRef – Re­duc­tion of en­ergy de­mand in heat­ing fur­naces by new com­bin­a­tion of aero­gel and re­fract­ory

Des­pite con­tinu­ous im­prove­ments in thermal in­su­la­tion in in­dus­tri­al fur­naces, heat losses through the fur­nace walls are un­avoid­able. But re­duc­tion of heat losses dir­ectly res­ults in eco­nom­ic and, in most cases, also eco­lo­gic­al ad­vant­ages (re­duc­tion of CO2 emis­sions).

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Hy­BeSt – Hy­brid Heat­ing in the steel in­dustry

Op­tim­al use of re­new­able en­ergy in in­dustry poses major chal­lenges to pro­duc­tion flex­ib­il­ity. Syn­chron­iz­ing fluc­tu­at­ing en­ergy sup­ply and con­tinu­ous pro­duc­tion pro­cesses and qual­ity re­quire­ments re­quires new ap­proaches.

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FlexElec­tric­Steel – In­tra­day En­ergy Man­age­ment for Elec­tric Steel Plants

Fluc­tu­at­ing en­ergy sup­ply re­quires new ap­proaches to en­ergy flex­ib­il­ity, also in the elec­tric steel pro­duc­tion sec­tor. De­term­in­a­tion of en­ergy plan­ning in pro­duc­tion must be ad­ap­ted to en­able short­er re­sponse times, high­er tem­por­al res­ol­u­tion, ac­cur­acy and re­li­ab­il­ity in fore­cast­ing elec­tri­city de­mand.

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VEIK – Im­prove­ment of heat treat­ment and heat­ing in in­dus­tri­al fur­naces by new in­nov­at­ive ceram­ic hot gas fans

Usage of metal­lic fans in ther­mo­pro­cessing plants is lim­ited to ap­prox. 600 to 800°C. Two types of fur­naces are ne­ces­sary for heat treat­ment, one for tem­per­at­ure val­ues up to 800°C and one for above 800°C. In the case of stacked goods in the fun­ace, loc­ally strongly vary­ing heat­ing at over 800°C. Pro­ject tar­get is to de­vel­op a ceram­ic fan for high tem­per­at­ure re­gion.

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H2-Dis­TherPro – Avoid­ance of CO2 emis­sions in the steel in­dustry by utilzing of hy­dro­gen in batch-type ther­mo­pro­cess plants on the ex­ample of batch an­neal­ing

The nat­ur­al gas de­mand of Ger­man iron and steel pro­duc­tion amounts to around 20.8 TWh. This cor­res­ponds to around 4.2 mil­lion tCO2/a of en­ergy-re­lated CO2 emis­sions. Cli­mate-neut­ral steel pro­duc­tion is to be achieved by 2045. "Green" hy­dro­gen can be used to re­place fossil fuel gases.

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H2S­tahl – Hy­dro­gen tech­no­lo­gies for a suc­cess­ive de­car­bon­isa­tion of the steel in­dustry

The "Reallabor H2S­tahl" is a col­lab­or­a­tion between the BFI and tkSE for re­search into hy­dro­gen-based dir­ect re­duc­tion. Test­ing the tech­no­logy on a pilot scale in an in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ment will make a sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate pro­tec­tion.

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In­noKon – In­nov­at­ive non-stick sur­face to in­crease the ser­vice life of oxy­gen lances on the con­vert­er

In the con­vert­er pro­cess, pig iron is con­ver­ted into crude steel with the ad­di­tion of oxy­gen.

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Green Steel for Europe

The European Union set con­crete tar­gets for the re­duc­tion of green­house gas emis­sions in terms of its 2030 cli­mate & en­ergy frame­work and its 2050 long-term strategy for a cli­mate neut­ral­ity.

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Me²H2-Meth­ane pyro­lys­is

Hy­dro­gen has a stead­ily grow­ing im­port­ance as an in­dus­tri­al feed­stock in many in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses, as a flex­ible en­ergy sources or in the field of mo­bil­ity.

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Re­flexRolle – De­vel­op­ment of a re­flect­ing, anti-ad­hes­ive Coat­ing for fur­nace rollers

With­in the planned re­search pro­ject a re­flect­ive and anti-ad­hes­ive coat­ing will be de­veloped for water-cooled fur­nace rolls in strip gal­van­iz­ing plants.

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STEBGUT – Fur­nace roller

The heat­ing of fine plates for hot-dip gal­van­iz­ing and / or heat treat­ment takes place in con­tinu­ous fur­naces. The plates are trans­por­ted through the fur­naces using metal good trans­port rollers. The high fur­nace room tem­per­at­ures of ap­prox. 1,300 °C. re­quire water cool­ing of these rollers. This res­ults in cool­ing losses of ap­prox. 300 kW per roll.

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Op­tiReg2 – Heat ex­changer

Poor con­vect­ive heat trans­fer in through-pas­sages of ceram­ic hon­ey­comb bod­ies. Size heat trans­fer area. Size of the re­gen­er­at­ors too high, space re­quire­ment at the fur­nace too large.

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REKUKER – Ceram­ic heat ex­changer

Steel re­cu­per­at­ors are lim­ited in the ap­plic­a­tion tem­per­at­ure. Ceram­ic re­cu­per­at­or burn­ers are suit­able for 1,200 ° C, but are only avail­able for small ca­pa­cit­ies. Ceram­ic re­cu­per­at­or burn­ers are not suit­able for dusty at­mo­spheres.

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IN­CERV – Ceram­ic hot gas fans

Use of metal­lic fans is only pos­sible to a lim­ited ex­tent due to high tem­per­at­ure val­ues in in­dus­tri­al fur­naces. Due to the creep de­form­a­tion, the speed of metal­lic fans must be re­duced from tem­per­at­ures > 500 ° C.

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NEBS – Use of waste heat for elec­tri­city gen­er­a­tion using ORC

In the iron and steel in­dustry as well as other en­ergy-in­tens­ive in­dus­tries, a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent thermal pro­cess plants are used for the pro­duc­tion and heat treat­ment of products and semi-fin­ished products.

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Pow­GETEG – TEG for high tem­per­at­ure waste heat re­cov­ery

In­dus­tries in­volve a huge amount of en­ergy de­mand. A con­sid­er­able amount of this en­ergy is lost and es­capes to am­bi­ent as waste heat. Due to com­mer­cial and stra­tegic reas­ons en­ergy re­cov­ery from in­dus­tri­al waste heat streams is get­ting more and more im­port­ant.

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IN­TEGA – Ther­mo­elec­tric gen­er­at­ors (TEG) for high tem­per­at­ure

In the iron and steel in­dustry, large amounts of heat are lost as ra­di­ation. One pos­sib­il­ity for the use of ra­di­ant heat is the con­ver­sion into elec­tri­city by means of ther­mo­elec­tric gen­er­at­ors (TEG).

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SimulEAF – Op­tim­iz­a­tion of the pro­cesses in the elec­tric arc fur­nace

The com­plete sim­u­la­tion of the com­plex pro­cesses in the elec­tric arc fur­nace re­quires a pre­vi­ously un­con­trolled nu­mer­ic­al ef­fort. The aim is to de­vel­op a com­pre­hens­ive CFD model and use it to de­rive meas­ures to re­duce en­ergy con­sump­tion and CO2 emis­sions in the pro­duc­tion of elec­tric­al steel, as well as to im­prove the yield.

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Plant­Temp – Plant wide con­trol of steel bath tem­per­at­ure

The aim of steel bath tem­per­at­ure con­trol is to pre­pare the melt such that it meets the tar­get tem­per­at­ure at cast­ing. In elec­tric arc fur­nace and ladle fur­nace steel melt is su­per­heated, to built up a tem­per­at­ure buf­fer ...

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Pre­vent­Sec­Dust – Re­duc­tion of dust emis­sions in the fur­nace

Due to the wide range of ma­ter­i­al trans­ports, the pre­par­a­tion of the fluff is one of the largest dust sources in the blast fur­nace. But im­port­ant know­ledge about sec­ond­ary emis­sions is miss­ing. The legal re­quire­ments re­gard­ing the emis­sions of dust (es­pe­cially fine dust) are be­com­ing ever more severe.

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Longlife Tuy­ere – New im­proved blast fur­nace tuy­eres

Burn­ing of tuy­eres is the most com­mon cause of un­planned shut­downs of blast fur­naces. The total non-pro­duct­ive en­ergy con­sump­tion per stop­page is about 1,500 GJ.

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Tran­sHyDE_FP1 - Sys­tem ana­lys­is of trans­port solu­tions for green hy­dro­gen

The Na­tion­al Hy­dro­gen Strategy (NWS) en­vis­ages se­cur­ity of sup­ply through intra-European pro­duc­tion as well as di­ver­si­fic­a­tion and se­cur­ing in­ter­na­tion­al im­ports of hy­dro­gen. This in­ev­it­ably res­ults in the need for a supra-re­gion­al trans­port and stor­age in­fra­struc­ture for the en­ergy car­ri­er.

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RE­DERS – Re­duced CO2 emis­sions by in­creas­ing the re­cyc­ling rate in steel pro­duc­tion

The aim of the pro­ject, which was fun­ded by the state of North Rhine-West­phalia and launched in Au­gust 2021, is to sig­ni­fic­antly re­duce CO2 emis­sions in steel pro­duc­tion in the short term by in­creas­ing the use of fer­rous re­cyc­ling ma­ter­i­al in the blast fur­nace and con­vert­er.

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H2BF – CO2-Mit­ig­a­tion through in­jec­tion of H2 into the blast fur­nace

This pro­ject is fun­ded from the State of NRW and aims to tech­nic­ally in­vest­ig­ate a new, mod­i­fied blast fur­nace pro­cess. Hy­dro­gen pro­duced by re­new­able en­er­gies is in­ten­ded to partly re­place the fossil-based car­bon as re­du­cing agent. By the in­jec­tion of H2 into the blast fur­nace the CO2-emis­sions of the pro­cess are ex­pec­ted to de­crease sig­ni­fic­antly.

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Ad­aptEAF – Ad­apt­ive EAF on-line con­trol for im­proved en­er­get­ic ef­fi­ciency

Prop­er­ties of scrap used as charge ma­ter­i­al for EAF steel­mak­ing are chan­ging with time re­gard­ing com­pos­i­tion, yield, en­ergy de­mand etc. Con­trol of chem­ic­al en­ergy input has to be ad­ap­ted heat-in­di­vidu­ally to achieve best res­ults re­gard­ing en­ergy con­sump­tion and metal­lic yield. Amount of the hot heel has an im­port­ant ef­fect on pro­cess per­form­ance, but is dif­fi­cult to ac­cess.

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