The role of biomass in the Decarbonization of the European Metallurgical Industry and visit of an industrial pilot plant for Hydrothermal Carbonization

This workshop aims to illustrate the transition of the European metallurgical industry and the role biomass and biomass-derived products can play. Issues may be related to the volatility of biomass and biocarbon, economic feasibility of biocarbon utilization, key properties of biocarbon for the metal industry, supply chain of biocarbon, biocarbon storage, handling and transportation and ISO standards.

In two and a half hours, Electric Arc Furnaces and Cupola Furnaces will be presented and their role for industry described. At present, both industrial processes use fossil-coal derived products which are a burden for the carbon dioxide balance. In future, biomass-derived coal products will have to close the gap. In this context, the workshop will look at biochar from the pyrolysis process and hydrochar from hydrothermal carbonization (HTC). Presenters come from Industry and Academia.

The workshop consists of two similar sessions: three short presentations of 15 min and a panel discussion of 30 min. In the first session, the situation in metallurgical industry is discussed and the second one explains possible solutions. After the workshop, the organizers offer a visit, free of charge, to an industrial pilot plant for hydrothermal carbonization which is a 20- minutes bus trip away from the congress venue. The tour will end again to the congress center and will take two hours.

First session (75 min)

Development and Utilization of Hydrothermally Carbonized Biomass for the Cupola Furnace, Frank Wondra, Herp Gießereitechnik GmbH, Germany

Use of biogenic carbon carriers in self-reducing agglomerates as a secondary raw material for iron foundries, Carsten Gondorf, RWTH, Germany

Utilization of secondary carbon for the steelmaking, Valentina Alemanno, RINA-CSM, Italy

Second session (75 min)

BIORECAST, 3 t of biocoal from biowaste streams to be used in EAF, Andrea Salimbeni, Re- Cord, Italy

Standards for solid biofuel and pyrogenic biocarbon, Martin Hitzl, Ingelia, Spain Production of hydrochar on industrial scale and its application in the BioReSteel project, Chuan Wang, Swerim, Sweden

This workshop is organized by the consortium of the BioReSteel RFCS project (bioresteel.eu) The project is funded by the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) under Project No.101112383. The partners are Swerim (SE), SSAB (SE), RWTH (DE), Ingelia (ES), FENO (IT), CSM (IT), KTH (SE), CELSA (ES), ORI (IT) and UPV (ES). The BioReSteel works on the validation of the use of hydrochar in the EAF furnace.