STEEL + TECHNOLOGY 04/2019 EXTRACT

STEEL TECHNOLOGY | 49
From liquid steel to rolling
Concepts and applications for higher
efficiency and zero-waste
To support the goal of sustainability, Danieli has expanded the portfolio of “green technologies.” Several energysaving
and recovery processes, zero-waste and safety concepts have been developed over recent decades.
Sustainability principles and
guidelines
In metals production “green technologies”
are those that reduce emissions, waste
by-products and resource consumption.
Resources represent costs and so reducing
the intake of raw materials and energy
provides economic advantages to metals
producers, but it also has benefits in terms
of emissions reduction: gaseous (CO 2 ), liquid
(dirty water), and solid emissions (slag).
There also are maintenance advantages,
as reducing resource consumption will limit
intervention and the reuse of old equipment
reduces the requirement for new
resources.
Personnel training and risk-analysis will
limit failures or accidents, which represent
costs both in terms of materials and of
human beings. Also, we study start-ups
and shut-downs because often these follow
very un-optimized paths, in order to
minimize consumption and equipment
wear, to abate costs and to cut emissions
and resource waste.
Developing “green” production
processes
From conceptual modeling to the prototype,
the design of new equipment relies
more and more on computational modeling.
CFD explores new configurations,
DoE reduces the number of experiments,
statistical tools transform sparse data into
information, and predictive models convert
observations into know-how.
Environmental constraints can be implemented
in these models like any other process
parameters. For example, the Acou-
Stack process was optimized by means of
detailed CFD modelling.
Increased process efficiency directly
supports decreasing energy and resources.
Machine-learning tools, using databases
of failures, procedures or maintenance,
have proven to be a valid aid to
increasing performance in complex processes.
The most notable new examples of
Danieli green technologies that have
resulted in new steelmaking technologies
are the Energiron process, for reduction of
iron ore using hydrogen, to minimize carbon
emissions; and the MI.DA. concept
for Endless Casting and Rolling, with low
CapEx and OpEx, to serve regional markets.
Resources for “green” research
Model predictive control, machine leaning,
and IoT are some ways to transfer research
teams’ experience into customer operators,
with adequate training to make the
most of it. More often, research projects
are followed by skilled employees in cooperation
with the most specialized universities,
as in the development of low NO x
burners, or water-oil emulsion lubricants
for aluminum cold-rolling.
Figure 1. Danieli Automation dashboard for Energiron DRI plant (Picture: Danieli)
Author: Rolando Paolone, Chief Technology Officer, Danieli SpA, Buttrio
(UD), Italy – Contact: sustainable-technologies@danieli.com
STEEL + TECHNOLOGY 1 (2019) No. 4