In Work Package 1, Dalmine ensured the overall coordination of the project while experiencing organisational changes, with Silvia Tosato replacing Fabio Praolini as Project Manager following his retirement. Management activities focused on maintaining effective governance structures, with General Assembly and Steering Committee meetings held as planned. Risk management remained an ongoing priority, particularly for the Plasma Reactor implementation phase, while intellectual property management activities continued to ensure protection and proper exploitation of innovative results. Data management followed FAIR principles under the leadership of K1-MET, with all datasets deposited on Zenodo for long-term preservation and open-access compliance.
In Work Package 2 and 3, the basic and detailed designs for the adaptation of the Tenaris Dalmine Ladle Furnace to facilitate the Plasma Reactor smelting reduction process were completely finalized. Particularly Tenova engineered a dedicated container for hot metal transport using the existing Kirov machine. The refractory lining specification was defined to ensure resistance to high temperatures and chemical attack from molten metal and slag.
Work Package 4 advanced the procurement phase under the leadership of Tenaris Dalmine, managing equipment acquisition and plant adaptation activities necessary for the Plasma Reactor demonstration.
Procurement adhered to rigorous internal procedures. Major progress included the order placement for new storage silos and weighing systems, to be installed adjacent to existing facilities without foreseen delays and detailed planning for integration during the August 2025 maintenance shutdown. Engineering revisions of the hot metal container design were implemented to mitigate risks of refractory damage during discharge, ensuring operational safety and process reliability. Feedstock preparation planning combined external hot briquetting for scale-plastic cookies with onsite cold briquetting of steelmaking residues to provide the required inputs for demonstration campaigns. Additionally, Plasma Reactor part is dealing with detailed environmental permit processes.
In Work Package 5, demo campaigns were prepared, focusing on RecoDust operations led by VAS. Plasma tests are not started (detailed action in technical report), for RecoDust various feed materials are being tested to achieve stable process performance and high-quality zinc and iron recovery, with comprehensive mass and energy balances under definition to quantify separation efficiencies. A material flow analysis was done for each trials and provides the data for the KPI´s. The main conclusions until now is that the burner has to be developed and the dezincification rate is depending on the dosing rate and the used air excess ratio.
Work Package 6 continued defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to evaluate yield, energy, environmental and economic performance of the integrated ReMFra processes. Led by K1-MET and FEHS, the team compiled metrics aligned with ISO 22400 standards to inform process optimisation and certification strategies. Parallel activities focused on assessing slag product qualities for higher-value applications such as cement production. Particularly, in Task 6.2 coordinated by FEhS, regulations and standard practices in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Spain were compiled mapping the complex regulation system. The main important KPI for RecoDust is the Specific zinc recovery efficiency (Y-05) and Zinc recovery efficiency can be increased by using a lower air excess ratio (0.8 instead of 0.9) ,higher air excess ratio needs lower specific energy consumption, a higher dosing rate leads to a higher zinc recovery efficiency.
Work Package 7 activities, began preparations for environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and techno-economic assessment of both processes, establishing inventories, data collection protocols and methodologies aligned with ISO 14040 and 14044 standard.
In Work Package 8, Task 8.1 and 8.3 has been ongoing, with three peer-reviewed papers having been published to date. Five workshops or fairs have been visited, and eight conferences have been attended as a speaker. Furthermore communication activities like newsletter or press-releases were done. Task 8.2 is successfully finished with the main results described in in D8.3.
Overall, the second reporting period achieved substantial technical progress, particularly in RecoDust demonstration plant, while Plasma Reactor is in its erection phase.
