CircSmeltSteel: Low carbon and circular valorisation of secondary materials in electric furnaces for proving high quality steelmaking with excellent product properties
Context
The European steel industry is undergoing a transition from the CO2-intensive blast furnace–basic oxygen furnace route (BF-BOF) to electrically based steel production. The goal of CircSmeltSteel is to investigate the entire process chain of green steel production starting from two low-CO2 process routes, the Electric Smelting Furnace (ESF) for the production of green hot metal and the Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) for the production of crude steel, to casting, hot and cold rolling, and finally the evaluation of end-product properties.
Research objectives
CircSmeltSteel will validate the use of metallurgical by-products as secondary resources in electric furnace-based iron and steelmaking. The project will investigate their influence on steel chemistry, microstructure, and final product properties – creating the knowledge needed for future circular steel production.
UGent contributes to this project through the investigation of two key slag properties for electrical steelmaking, namely slag viscosity and slag electrical conductivity. Experiments will be carried on both synthetic slag samples as well as effective slags from industrial
Project logo and funding logo
This project is funded via the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme.
Partners
Researchers