The 13th International Conference Society and Materials SAM13 takes place on 20th and 21st May in Pisa, Italy at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, where topics like the evaluation of products and processes sustainability and new sustainable development strategies will be discussed.
More than 90 experts will meet in Pisa to connect and share their ideas about topical aspects, including sustainability, circular economy, eco-design, energy and climate change, innovations, etc. There will also be a special session for robotics and its implications in steel industry.
Focusing on cutting edge technologies applied to materials and processes in the steel industry, RINA will play an important role, presenting a series of works on different topics that are the result of the collaboration with some of our key partners.
Moreover, on 22nd May RINA will also take part in the one-day seminar, which is related to the RFCS dissemination project DISS_I2M (Dissemination of results od RFCS-Projects in the field of integrated intelligent manufacturing). During this workshop, Maria Murri (RINA) and Alessio Ventura (RINA) will do an intervention, focusing on the technologies and results of RFCS projects for the optimization of scrap charge management and advanced monitoring in liquid steelmaking.
This paper presents an innovative instrument for the measurement of the thickness of the mould powder layer. The resonance of electromagnetic waves in a properly designed electromagnetic cavity is the principle on which is based the innovative sensor. For this reason, the instrument is named radio frequency powder sensor (RF) and here are described the results of the installation on billet and bloom continuous casting machines.
The RF sensors are mounted on many strands working since some years without inconveniences. The RF sensor can be connected in closed loop with the system of automatic feeding of the mould powder allowing to maintain a uniform and constant thickness of the powder layer for the entire production process, ensuring the best casting conditions for products of any steel grade.
Relevant improvements of the quality of as cast long products have been accomplished, especially in the production of steel grades with high surface quality requirements, where good performances are achieved thanks to the stability of the process conditions.
Franco Macci (*), Fernando Menchetti (*), Luca Cestari (**)
(*)RINA
(**)Danieli Automation S.p.A.
Industrial symbiosis is an association between two or more industrial facilities or companies in which materials and energy wastes, by-products, and also services and expertise of one become resources for another. In this context, steel production can play an important role in a possible exchanges network of materials and energy flows with other industrial contests. Synergies between steel and other industrial sectors can be demonstrated by convincing examples of established markets.
The aim is to introduce the "philosophy" of Industrial Symbiosis in the territory, including the historical steel plant of ArcelorMittal Italia (ex ILVA), in a center of a network of multi-sectorial synergies involving local, provincial and regional facilities. Synergies with other production sectors are fundamental for application of circular economy and to reach an industrial symbiosis scenario.
Loredana Di Sante (*), Antonello Di Donato (*), Elenia Duce (*), Vincenzo Cesareo (**), Mario Mantovani (**)
(*)RINA
(**)Confindustria Taranto
Plastic production is an important industrial sector. The annual amount of produced plastic in Europe is about 50 Mt. The H2020 project POLYNSPIRE has been launched to demonstrate a set of innovative, cost effective and sustainable solutions, aiming at improving the energy and resource efficiency of post-consumer and post-industrial plastic recycling processes, targeting 100% waste streams. To reach this ambitious goal, three innovation pillars are addressed:
The Electric Arc Furnace, EAF, has been purposely developed to re-melt recycled steel scrap. The EAF based production cycle is very close to the concept of circular economy. Increasing the process sustainability and keeping the same efficiency and productivity constrain of the melting process, transforms the EAF in the core of a more complex industrial eco-system, where materials from other industrial sectors are recycled in EAF. In the EAF, scrap melting is accomplished by supply electrical and chemical energy to the furnace. The chemical energy is supplied via several sources such as natural gas burning and injection of carbon-based materials. The mix of polymers discharged at the end of recovery chain, can be used to replace the fossil fuels currently used in EAF process, such as natural gas and coal.
A pluri-disciplinary and cross-sectorial approach, based on circular economy paradigm, coupled with technological innovation, leads to significant reduction of environmental impact and improved sustainability.
Filippo Cirilli (*), Antonello Di Donato (*), Eros Faraci (*), Daphne Mirabile (*), Michele De Santis(*), Loris Bianco (**), Mirko Bottolo (***), Jaroslav Brhel (****)
(*) RINA
(**) Ferriere Nord
(***) Idealservice
(****) HTT Engineering
An online tool based on Computational Fluid Dynamics modelling was developed, validated and applied to Colakoglu Metalurji 2-strands slab caster to monitor and manage steel intermixing in tundish at ladle change. The tool allows to reduce the length of the slabs with intermixed steel. Different tundish layout and operating conditions are accounted for as slab size, presence of flow modifiers in tundish, tundish refill time, casting speed (also different from strand to strand), steel grade.
The tool was developed by RINA following the suggestions and needs of Colakoglu Metalurji, who provided to a successful validation of the tool, with slab sampling and support for installation and testing. As a result, the tool has been integrated into the Colakoglu CC2 control system and is currently used offline for optimizing a priori mixed grade production scheduling, and online for slab cutting optimization in order to reduce the downgraded product amount.
Michele De Santis (*), Nicola De Santis (*), Daniele Fera (*), Riccardo Tonelli (*), S. Oktay (**), A. Oran (**)
(*) RINA
(**) Colakoglu Metalurji
The world annual generation of spent refractory is estimated close to 30 million tons. The most of spent refractories are still disposed in landfill, recycling is mainly based on open-loop option, using spent refractory as raw materials for different applications (slag former, cement, road base aggregates, etc.). Only a small amount of spent refractory (estimated to around 7%) is closed-loop recycled to produce new refractories.
In the recent years the interest in recycling spent refractories for producing new high value refractory components is increasing, for both economic and environmental reasons.
The performed activity demonstrates that the manufacturing of Compositionally Graded Refractories is a promising way to realize circular economy in different energy intensive industrial sector. In fact up to 10% of industrial by products like spent refractories can be utilized in substitution of virgin materials for creating the blend of the back part of CGR bricks.
The chemical and physical properties of the new developed refractories are designed for their use in industrial applications.
Daniela Olevano (*), Patrizia Miceli (*), Umberto Martini (*), Antonello Di Donato (*)
(*) RINA
