Over the last few decades, the European steel industry has focused its efforts on the improvement of by-product recovery and quality, based not only on existing technologies, but also on the development of innovative sustainable solutions. These activities have led the steel industry to save natural resources and to reduce its environmental impact, resulting in being closer to its “zero-waste” goal. In addition, the concept of Circular Economy has been recently strongly emphasised at a European level. The opportunity is perceived of improving the environmental sustainability of the steel production by saving primary raw materials and costs related to by-products and waste landfilling. The aim of this review paper was to analyse the most recent results on the reuse and recycling of by-products of the steelmaking cycles as well as on the exploitation of by-products from other activities outside the steel production cycle, such as alternative carbon sources (e.g., biomasses and plastics). The most relevant results are identified and a global vision of the state-of-the-art is extracted, in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the main outcomes achieved by the European steel industry and of the ongoing or potential synergies with other industrial sectors.
When measuring a three-dimensional shape with triangulation and projected interference fringes it is of interest to reduce speckle contrast without destroying the coherence of the projected light. A moving aperture is used to suppress the speckles and thereby reduce the phase error in the fringe image. It is shown that the phase error depends linearly on the ratio between the speckle contrast and the modulation of the fringes. In this investigation the spatial carrier method was used to extract the phase, where the phase error also depends on filtering the Fourier spectrum. An analytical expression for the phase error is derived. Both the speckle reduction and the theoretical expressions for the phase error are verified by simulations and experiments. It was concluded that a movement of the aperture by three aperture diameters during exposure of the image reduces the speckle contrast and hence the phase error by 60%. In the experiments, a phase error of 0.2 rad was obtained.
In the steel sector, sustainable management of by-products is a key challenge to preserve natural resources and achieve the zero waste goal. In this paper, the main trends of future research and development on reuse and recycling of by-products of the steel industry are presented in the form of a roadmap, which is the outcome of a dissemination project funded by the European Union based on the analysis of the most relevant and recent European projects concerning reuse and recycling of by-products from the steel production cycle. In particular, the developed roadmap highlights the most important topics of future research activities and challenges related to reuse and recycling of by-products from the existing or alternative steelmaking routes. A time horizon of 10 years has been considered, taking into account the European Commission targets to achieve carbon neutrality in a circular economy context. In addition, current technological trends derived from past and ongoing research projects are analysed. Research needs are based on the main categories of by-products and residual materials. Due to the different pathways to reduce CO2 emissions, each category is divided into subcategories considering both current and novel process routes targeting decarbonization of steel production. This work identifies the most urgent and demanding research directions for the coming years based on a survey targeting the steel companies, services providers of the steel industry and research organizations active in the field.
In the Swedish steel industry, much work is put on further increasing the recycling and use of residual materials. However, blast furnace sludge is one residual which currently, despite its valuable contents of iron and carbon, is put on landfill or long-term storage due to its zinc content. Linde has developed the OXYFINES technique which is suitable for upgrading of fine particulate and zinc containing materials. The material is fed to the OXYFINES burner whereby its zinc content is vaporised to a generated dust phase whereas other non-gasifiable contents, such as iron, forms an oxidic sinter phase in the bottom of the reactor. The technique has proven a high degree of zinc separation, is relatively flexible and straightforward, and does not require sludge pre-treatment such as drying. Pilot set-up and trials, using the OXYFINES technique, were performed at Swerim’s research facility. In the trials, the effects from altering different process parameters were tested aiming to develop an optimal concept for upgrading the blast furnace sludge. The pilot trials’ results showed the required process settings to attain a high degree of zinc separation from the sludge, and to generate an iron oxide product, suitable for straightforward charging to the steelmaking process.
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