The aim of the project is to introduce scrap-based Electric Arc Furnace steel products into mass-market sheet metal consumer goods with high-quality requirements, currently served with Blast Furnace+ Basic Oxygen Furnace steel. This includes developing a toolbox of enabling technologies in the form of test methodologies and Machine Learning-enhanced modelling tools to accommodate these materials and demonstrating them in a full Value Chain, from scrap to end users.
This objective implies gaining knowledge on which trace elements are present in the available fluxes of scrap, determining how trace elements affect steel properties; notably formability, strength, fracture toughness, fatigue, surface chemistry and hydrogen embrittlement; and establishing safe thresholds for established use cases. The pursued use cases correspond to consumer goods where BOF is used due to composition requirements.
Detailed analyses will be used to comprehend how these residuals interact with the base steel (precipitation, phase transformations), including advanced characterization through synchrotron and Atom Probe Tomography.
Scrap as a raw material will be studied, together with methodologies to improve its quality. The aim is to maximize the use of low-quality scrap for a given target amount of residuals, through the use of techniques that separate undesired inclusions from the main stream of steel, focusing on Copper and high alloy steels.
In order to account for material variability, two approaches will be followed. First, to develop tests to generate material performance data much quicker and cheaper than the ones currently available, thus ensuring that frequent or even online testing can be deployed. Second, to develop machine learning (ML) enhanced techniques for modelling that can take this material variability into account and integrate it into a process digital twin.
These developments will be showcased in pilot trials in two mass-market applications: automotive industry and white goods. These trials will have the objective of ensuring that the material and production route developed in CiSMA can be readily accepted by the market, demonstrate the developed toolset of enabling technologies, and quantify the environmental improvements achieved compared to the current product.
