The HI4S project is oriented to reduce the impact of energy intensive industries to climate change through the design and construction of an innovative cost-effective combined heat and electricity production plant from waste heat, contained in the off-gas of an electric arc furnace from the steel making industry.
Most of the energy consumed by European industries is used as process heat, accounting for more than 1800 TWh/year. After the industrial processes, 20% to 50% of this energy is lost as waste heat in the form of gaseous or liquid streams. Regarding steel making companies that use electric arc furnaces, they use additional energy to control the emissions of hot gases through a cooling and pollution removal process, before releasing a large amount of gas to the atmosphere.
The waste heat contained in these exhaust gases is indeed the target of LIFE HI4S project. As potential savings for energy intensive industries it could reach up to 15.4% of the total energy lost. For the steel industry that accounts for almost 30% of total EU heat consumption.
With this objective in mind, LIFE HI4S project is working on the construction and validation of an innovative cost-effective combined heat and electricity production plant from waste heat contained in the off-gas of an electric arc furnace in the steel making industry. The LIFE HI4S technology is composed of different components that are being developed to be implemented:
- A High temperature ceramic filtering system that is a low cost and reliable solution to manage the fouling problems due to high temperature and dust presence;
- A low-cost thermal energy storage system, based on the work carried out within the H2020 ReSlag project, which will act as a thermal energy accumulator using steel slag as thermal energy storage material to face the intermittent nature of the heat source;
- A scrap dryer, that uses a hot off-gas stream through the scrap to maximize the heat recovery and reduces the humidity content of the scrap;
- An innovative Organic Rankine Cycle system that will use heat waste to produce electricity for the plant self-power supply while using a new vector fluid with a lower Global Warming Potential.
Therefore, introducing LIFE HI4S technology in arc furnace steel plants will allow to use waste heat to produce electricity, to decrease the electric demand by pre-heating scrap before melting (reducing the amount of energy required for this operation) and to heat a steel slag thermal energy storage system that will provide a continuous source of energy on demand, reducing as well the slag wastage.
LIFE HI4S project is funded by LIFE Programme of the European Union and is completely aligned with European Green Deal priorities to get full economy decarbonization through disruptive technologies with the potential to promote energy efficiency in intensive energy consumption industries.
In addition, the project aims to carry on the work done in the previous EU funded H2020 project ReSlag (Grant Agreement n. 642067), where steel slag was successfully tested as a thermal energy storage system, contributing to reduce its landfilling by providing a second life to this material.
