SUS0103AA – Sustainability in EAF steelmaking

Description

Estimated Time: 1,5 hr

Language: English

Summary of the lecture

Sustainability is a topic on everyone’s lips these days. Everyone is talking about decarbonizing the steel industry, but this does not stop at ironmaking, even so, this process at the moment is accountable for the biggest share of CO₂ emissions in the steel industry. Sustainability covers more aspects than just CO₂ emissions of a process. But what does it mean for EAF steelmaking?

To answer the question this course will touch upon topics like energy efficiency, resource efficiency and carbon footprint of EAF steelmaking. The concepts will be defined and factors influencing the sustainability will be discussed. Finally, options to increase the sustainability of EAF steelmaking like fossil carbon substitutes, energy efficiency improvements and circular economy approaches will be presented.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course the participants will be able to:

• Describe the concept of sustainability in EAF steelmaking.
• Recognize the factors influencing the sustainability.
• List options to increase the sustainability.

Speaker Introduction

Thomas Echterhof 
Senior Researcher at the Department for Industrial Furnaces and Heat Engineering,
RWTH Aachen University

Dr.-Ing. Thomas Echterhof is academic director at the Department for Industrial Furnaces and Heat Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He studied metallurgical and materials engineering at RWTH Aachen University and received his diploma in 2005 and his doctorate in engineering science in 2010. Since 2009 he is leading the research group on mass and energy balances with a special emphasis on the resource and energy efficiency of electric arc furnace and heat treatment processes. Since 2011 he is deputy head of the department and since 2019 academic director.

Thomas was project manager in charge of the RWTH contribution to seven EU RFCS projects related to EAF steelmaking and was coordinator in four of them. He was also responsible for several other national funded research projects. His main research interests include the optimisation of energy and resource efficiency and environmental impact of energy and resource intensive processes like the EAF steelmaking. Thomas has authored or co-authored more than 70 journal and conference papers. He is also involved in teaching and is giving a lecture on electric arc furnace technology at RWTH Aachen University. In 2015 he established the European Academic Symposium on EAF Steelmaking – EASES and organized it regularly since then.