Integrated Refractory and Steel Recovery

ended

The steel industry is a strategic production sector, however it puts strong pressure on the environment because of the nature and quantity of material involved, gas emissions and waste. Of particular concern are 1) the huge volume of landfilled spent refractory, about 80-90% of total ladles and furnaces demolition material; and 2) the massive lime consumption, generating large amounts of CO2 emissions. To date no technology existed in the steel industry that achieved recycling rates higher than about 50%, can be performed in situ and permit the use of the vast majority of treated waste within the same production cycle. These assets would significantly reduce economic and environmental costs of steel production. Deref S.p.a. ( ‘DEmolizione REFrattari’) has a solid and long-lasting experience in the steel sector, and even more in steel refractory demolition, industrial waste management and metallurgical additives production. It developed a proper solution, tested it industrially at an Electric Arc Furnace plant for stainless steel production, and achieved a 95% recycling rate with 80% reuse in the same production plant and very high cost savings. It now sees a high potential to capitalise these huge achievements by focusing the entire steel production market - consisting in more than 18 relevant sized steel plants in EU and much more in the rest of the world. Hereto, Deref will optimise and adapt its patented and proven technology to all types of steel production cycles and steel grades and validate results within large-scale trials and demonstrations, performed with at least 7 big steel producers, to obtain confirmation on the suitability of the treatment cycles in different use cases and to provide for evidence to the market. It will also standardise protocols and designs, and obtain an ETV certification. Lastly, it will widely inform and convince the market by a well targeted communication and dissemination strategy and update the commercialisation plan.