Improvement of the yield of the iron and steel making (Clean Steel Partnership) (IA)

R&I areas that needs to be tackled should address some of these aspects:

• Selection and integration of best available and applicable technologies to reduce impurities in post-consumer scrap before melting together with scrap yard management supported by digital smart tools for scrap classification and charge optimization; these are key elements to increase the use of scrap achieving the same quality of the finished product in both, the EAF, and BF/BOF route and at the same time reducing CO₂ emissions due to lower energy need with respect to iron-ore;
• Development, deployment, and use of smart sensor and dedicated Big Data analytics to develop and further optimize decision-supported systems for helping steel plant operators to increase the process yield and to improve the final steel product quality. The projects should ensure involvement of operators and process experts in development and implementation of Big Data, ensuring the uptake of human experiences and a user-friendly processing of results;
• Realisation of demonstration plants at relevant industrial scale focusing on material upgrading technologies (cleaning, size control) as well as inline characterization of ferrous materials via novel technologies for onsite characterization (chemical composition and physical properties);
• Development and implementation of highly efficient technologies for recovering metals and mineral fraction from steelmaking residues, including those coming from H₂-based metallurgy ones, with high metallic or oxidic fractions; two possible ways are envisioned, whereas the first one is based on cooling and mechanical steps, such as wet or dry granulation followed by phase separation; the second one relies on a direct recycling of residues in existing production processes or in dedicated pyrometallurgic melting and reduction units;
• Full by-product testing and evaluation to have them covered by a standard like a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) or by a national technical agreement;
• Enabling the use of obtained by-products in higher value applications (i.e. filtering, coating, additive manufacturing, material for CO₂ sequestration, heat accumulator);
• Integration of energy recovery solutions in metal recovery processes targeting at a better Return of Investment.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on Clean Steel.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement