The Academy of Finland has awarded Academy Research Fellow grant to Mamdouh Omran and Postdoctoral Researcher grant to Henri Pauna

For the steel industry to achieve the ambitious goals of greener steelmaking by 2050, the whole steelmaking chain from raw material to the end product has to be considered. The current techniques used for recycling steelmaking wastes still have economic and environmental problems owing to high energy consumption and high CO2 emission. The path towards a sustainable future and climate protection requires relying on renewable energy and eliminating fossil fuels from industry. Mamdouh’s project aims to offer solutions to improve recycling of steelmaking wastes and overcome the disadvantages of traditional recycling methods by developing a new technique by combining microwaves and biomass. Thus, the project aims to increase electrification of metallurgical processes and reduce greenhouse gas emissions according to EU Green Deal vision.

In addition to e.g. electricity in the electric arc furnace steelmaking, energy is also provided by gas burners in order to increase the melting rate of the charge material or reheat steel slabs for final production. For the steel industry to decrease carbon dioxide emissions, the burner gases will have to gradually change toward hydrogen and/or bio-fuels eventually. The objective of Pauna’s work is to develop an on-line process control tool for steelmaking burners with optical emission spectroscopy coupled with a heat transfer model. On-line in situ process control tool for burners would allow increasing the efficiency of the burners and optimizing the flame's properties. In addition to natural gas burners, gases with elevated hydrogen content up to 100 % H2 will be studied in this project so that the effect of gradual change towards hydrogen applications can be realized