STK0141 – Sustainable EAF steelmaking

Description

Date: 21 September, 2023, 13.00 UTC. Webinar

Estimated Time: 1 hr

Language: English

Summary of the lecture

Sustainability is on everyone’s lips these days. Everyone is talking about decarbonising the steel industry, but this does not stop at ironmaking, even though this process is currently responsible for the largest share of CO2 emissions in the steel industry. Sustainability covers more aspects than just the CO2 emissions of a process, but what does it mean for EAF steelmaking?
To answer this question, this masterclass will cover topics such as energy efficiency, resource efficiency and the carbon footprint of EAF steelmaking. The concepts will be defined and factors influencing sustainability will be discussed. Finally, options to increase the sustainability of EAF steelmaking such as fossil carbon substitutes, energy efficiency improvements and circular economy approaches will be presented.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the concept of sustainability in EAF steelmaking
• Understand the factors that influence the sustainability of EAF steelmaking

Speaker Introduction

Senior Researcher
RWTH Aachen University

Thomas Echterhof is Academic Director at the Department of Industrial Furnaces and Heat Engineering at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. He has a background in metallurgical engineering from RWTH Aachen University and received his PhD in engineering in 2010. Since 2009 he has been leading the research group on mass and energy balances with a special focus on resource and energy efficiency of electric arc furnaces and heat treatment processes.

Thomas has been project manager for the RWTH contribution to nine EU RFCS projects related to EAF steelmaking and has been coordinator in five of them. His main research interests are the optimisation of energy and resource efficiency and the environmental impact of energy and resource intensive processes such as EAF steelmaking. Thomas has authored or co-authored more than 70 journal and conference papers. He is also involved in teaching with a lecture on electric arc furnace technology at RWTH Aachen University.