SMARTER aims at developing advanced methodologies and tools to support the revamping and the optimized management of gas and steam networks in integrated steelworks, improve energy efficiency, reduce CO2 emissions as well as energy and management costs
The ongoing pressure toward energy efficiency is expected to push steel companies toward an evolution of gas and steam networks in integrated steelworks through major modifications, such as addition of new junctions, new storage possibilities, and additional energy and gas sources.
A more dynamic interaction with the energy market is also expected and an increased exploitation of renewable energy resources, which imply fluctuations in the energy costs and increased demand for flexibility of energy carriers’ distribution and for rapid adaption to changes. Furthermore, the European steel sector is expected to undergo in the medium-long term a gradual transition toward C-lean processes and technologies, characterized by a novel and for many aspects not fully explored coexistence of traditional and innovative processes and production units, such as the Direct Reduced Iron /Electric Arc Furnace route including Natural Gas and Hydrogen exploitation and/or auxiliary processes exploiting the energy and chemical contents of by-product gases. This gradual transition toward C-lean processes and technologies will indeed affect the gas and steam networks, and will imply a huge revamping of such networks, requiring a re-optimization of the whole network and the re-configuration of aggregates for a full exploitation of the advantages of the performed changes.
SMARTER tackles the above-mentioned challenge, as it aims at developing advanced methodologies and tools to support the revamping of gas and steam networks for improving energy efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions as well as energy and management costs. The developed solution relies on computationally efficient process models exploiting data-driven approaches, such as statistical, Machine Learning (ML)-based and hybrid ones, which will allow forecasting gas and steam productions and demands related to the different aggregates included in the networks and characterizing both standard and more innovative production routes.
The project aims at optimising the management and the structure of the steam and gas networks inside integrated steelworks in the light of the future developments of the steel production. The availability of efficient and optimized gas and steam networks is fundamental for the optimal management of the steelworks of the future, such as it is for the more traditional one, where it is recognised as a fundamental element to reduce CO2 emissions, energy consumptions, and related costs. Therefore, structural modifications of the networks are considered together with innovative processes and production units, such as DRI/EAF route including natural gas and hydrogen exploitation, which can affect the behaviour of the networks.
