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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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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SufCon­In­spect - 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

Flu­or­idSelekt­iv - Pro­cess de­vel­op­ment for se­lect­ive flu­or­ide sep­ar­a­tion from in­dus­tri­al pro­cess water

Pro­cess water from pig iron and steel pro­duc­tion has flu­or­ide con­tents of up to 100 mg/L. A se­lect­ive sep­ar­a­tion of the flu­or­ide is ne­ces­sary and use­ful for de­riv­a­tion or cir­cu­la­tion. If flu­or­ide re­mains in the con­cen­trate dur­ing pro­cess water de­sal­in­a­tion, it is often not us­able and can­not be dis­posed of. The meth­ods of se­lect­ive ad­sorp­tion and se­lect­ive pre­cip­it­a­tion are suit­able for ef­fect­ive flu­or­ide sep­ar­a­tion.

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ZinkAt­line - De­vel­op­ment of an at­line meas­ur­ing meth­od for rapid ana­lys­is of the total zinc con­tent in pro­cess water

The pro­cess water oc­cur­ring in steel pro­duc­tion and sur­face treat­ment (gal­van­ising) can be con­tam­in­ated with el­ev­ated zinc levels. There are also dis­cus­sions about sig­ni­fic­antly lower­ing the cur­rent dis­charge lim­its for sur­face treat­ment from 2 mg/L to 1 mg/L to 0.1 mg/L, which re­quires im­me­di­ate ac­tion in pro­cess man­age­ment and wastewa­ter treat­ment.

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Konzen­trat-Bioz­id - De­vel­op­ment of a re­li­able pro­cess for cool­ing water de­sal­in­a­tion based on mem­brane-as­sisted ca­pa­cit­ive de­ion­iz­a­tion with pro­duc­tion of mono­con­cen­trates

The legal lim­its for cool­ing and wastewa­ter dis­charge are con­tinu­ally being tightened. Water with­draw­al is in­creas­ingly lim­ited and there is a tem­por­ary water short­age. This res­ults in a po­ten­tial neg­at­ive im­pact on pro­duc­tion (cor­ro­sion, water/plant avail­ab­il­ity) in steel and iron pro­duc­tion, par­tic­u­larly in cool­ing and cast­ing pro­cesses.

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Process optimisation

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. For con­tinu­ous mon­it­or­ing of pro­cess per­form­ance, as well as model ac­cur­acy and ad­apt­a­tion of model and ma­ter­i­al para­met­ers, ap­pro­pri­ate ana­lys­is tools are miss­ing. Thus, the re­li­ab­il­ity of pro­cess mod­els with­in a Level-2 auto­ma­tion sys­tem is not per­man­ently en­sured.

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Hy­droP­ic - Ana­lys­is and con­trol of hy­dro­gen con­tent dur­ing steel­mak­ing

Hy­dro­gen dis­solved in steel can be in­ter­sti­tially em­bed­ded in the mi­cro­struc­ture, which leads to tensile and fa­tigue strength re­duc­tion and there­fore to com­pon­ent mal­func­tions. The de­mands on low­est hy­dro­gen con­tents in the final steel product are more and more in­creas­ing, es­pe­cially for high strength steels. A tar­geted con­trol of hy­dro­gen con­tent in li­quid steel­mak­ing is dif­fi­cult, as the level of hy­dro­gen pick-up after va­cu­um treat­ment can be pre­dicted only with high un­cer­tainty, and only spot H meas­ure­ments are avail­able.

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Tri­boSim - Ex­per­i­ment­al and sim­u­lat­ive eval­u­ation of wear on roll coat­ings

Be­cause of in­creased wear on work rolls due to in­creased use of ultra-high-strength steels in auto­mot­ive pro­duc­tion and the use of toxic and car­ci­no­gen­ic chromic acid for wear-re­du­cing hard chrome plat­ing of rolls, costly plant tri­als are re­quired for the de­vel­op­ment of new roll coat­ings

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