Here you will find an overview of all our projects:

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CO2 reduction and energy efficiency

H2-EiPro - In­vest­ig­a­tion of the im­pact of H2 com­bus­tion in in­dus­tri­al fur­naces on the product by using the ex­ample of steel slabs

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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NH3-Infra - Cre­ation of an NH3 in­fra­struc­ture in the tech­nic­al cen­ter for R&D work on in­dus­tri­al-scale burn­er de­vel­op­ment

“Green” am­mo­nia will be ex­amined in fur­nace com­bus­tion to sub­sti­tute fossil fuel gases and / or hy­dro­gen in thermal pro­cessing plants or as a re­du­cing agent in the ex­haust gas stream to re­duce NOx emis­sions.

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SUPER - Sus­tain­able fu­ture steel pro­duc­tion and people re­cruit­ing and skilling

The European steel in­dustry is fa­cing a dual trans­form­a­tion: the de­car­bon­isa­tion of pro­duc­tion pro­cesses and demo­graph­ic change with­in the work­force. Com­pre­hens­ive tech­no­lo­gic­al ad­just­ments are ne­ces­sary to achieve European cli­mate tar­gets, in­clud­ing new pro­cesses, plant con­cepts and al­tern­at­ive en­ergy sources.

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Digitisation and process measurement technology

AgiFlex - Agent-based mod­els min­im­iz­ing car­bon usage in flex­ible and ef­fi­cient fu­ture in­teg­rated steel­works

Com­pre­hens­ive changes in the steel in­dustry's pro­duc­tion chains are ne­ces­sary to re­duce CO2 emis­sions. Against this back­ground, pro­cess in­teg­ra­tion must be re-op­tim­ized, es­pe­cially with re­gard to gas and en­ergy flows. Ex­ist­ing tools of cur­rent in­form­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies are not suit­able for these new tasks due to a lack of flex­ib­il­ity and op­tim­iz­a­tion cap­ab­il­ity.

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Surf­Con­In­spect - En­abling zero-de­fect man­u­fac­tur­ing for flat steel pro­duc­tion by means of op­tim­ized in­spec­tion res­ults and a new level of on­line sur­face qual­ity con­trol

Re­source-ef­fi­ciency and com­pet­it­ive­ness are main aims of the European Green Deal trans­form­a­tion. In this glob­al re­struc­tur­ing pro­cess yield im­prove­ment and re­duc­tion of waste aimed at by a zero-de­fect pro­duc­tion are low-cost op­por­tun­it­ies for European steel man­u­fac­tur­ers to real­ize a more sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion.

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Steam­Dry - Su­per­heated steam dry­ing for sus­tain­able and re­cyc­lable web-like ma­ter­i­als

The Steam­Dry pro­ject aims to sig­ni­fic­antly de­crease en­ergy con­sump­tion and CO2 emis­sions in the paper and board man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dustry by show­cas­ing a concept that achieves a re­mark­able 60% en­ergy sav­ings in thermal dry­ing and 40% en­ergy sav­ings on a pro­duc­tion line, with the po­ten­tial for up to 100% CO2 emis­sion re­duc­tion.

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Circular economy

Circ­Smelt­Steel - Low Car­bon and cir­cu­lar val­or­isa­tion of sec­ond­ary ma­ter­i­als in elec­tric fur­naces for prov­ing high-qual­ity steel­mak­ing with ex­cel­lent ap­plic­a­tion-ori­ented product prop­er­ties

The pro­ject Circ­Smelt­Steel val­id­ates the use of me­tal­lur­gic­al by-products as sec­ond­ary sources in low car­bon iron and steel­mak­ing and cla­ri­fies the im­pact of steel qual­ity on product prop­er­ties meet­ing EU ob­ject­ives on net zero man­u­fac­tur­ing, sus­tain­ab­il­ity, and com­pet­it­ive­ness.

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En­WaRec - Re­cov­ery of en­ergy and water from cool­ing cir­cuits for a sus­tain­able trans­ition to hy­dro­gen-based dir­ect re­duc­tion

The trans­form­a­tion of iron and steel in­dustry from car­bon to H2-based pro­duc­tion is em­bed­ded in new dir­ect­ives as Na­tion­al En­ergy and Cli­mate Plans fo­cus­ing on waste heat re­cov­ery rates up to 50% to de­crease CO2 emis­sions.

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Geo­CRM - Geo­me­tal­lur­gic­al pro­cessing of steel­mak­ing slag for re­cyc­ling crit­ic­al raw ma­ter­i­als and CO2 bind­ing

With an an­nu­al crude steel pro­duc­tion of 37 Mt/a (2022), which cor­res­ponds to ap­prox­im­ately 27% of European pro­duc­tion, Ger­man steel man­u­fac­tur­ing is an es­sen­tial eco­nom­ic and ma­ter­i­al sec­tor. Crit­ic­al raw ma­ter­i­als (CRM), such as va­na­dium and phos­phor­us, are con­tained both in the raw ma­ter­i­als used (e.g. ores) and in slag, the largest by-product in terms of quant­ity.

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Process optimisation

AI4EAFRoute - Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Sup­port­ing In­nov­at­ive EAF Route Meth­ods for Pro­cess and Plant Man­age­ment to En­hance Per­form­ance and Com­pon­ent Ef­fect­ive­ness

The pro­ject aims to en­hance the per­form­ance, re­li­ab­il­ity, and sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the Elec­tric Arc Fur­nace (EAF) pro­cess by in­teg­rat­ing ad­vanced mon­it­or­ing tech­no­lo­gies with ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) tools.

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su­per­ProDR - Dir­ect re­duc­tion pro­cess op­er­a­tion with su­per­i­or pro­ductiv­ity

The European steel in­dustry faces the massive chal­lenge of re­du­cing its CO2 emis­sions by 55% by 2030 and be­com­ing cli­mate-neut­ral by 2050. The trans­form­a­tion roadmaps en­vis­age re­pla­cing the pre­vi­ous pro­duc­tion chain via the blast fur­nace with dir­ect re­duc­tion (DR). Due to high nat­ur­al gas and elec­tri­city prices in most European coun­tries, how­ever, it is dif­fi­cult to op­er­ate the DR pro­cess com­pet­it­ively.

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Per­Mon­LiSt - Con­tinu­ous per­form­ance mon­it­or­ing and cal­ib­ra­tion of model and con­trol func­tions for li­quid steel­mak­ing pro­cesses

Ana­lyt­ic­al pro­cess mod­els are used as part of Level-2 auto­ma­tion for ob­ser­va­tion and con­trol of steel­mak­ing pro­cesses. Due to changes in the op­er­a­tion prac­tices, the input ma­ter­i­als or the pro­duced qual­it­ies, the pre­dic­tion ac­cur­acy of the mod­els and the re­li­ab­il­ity of set-point cal­cu­la­tions is de­teri­or­ated.

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