On 3rd December the “Centro de Investigaciones Científicas, Isla de la Cartuja” (Scientific research center, Isla de la Cartuja) hosted the meeting entitled “Steel solutions to societal challenges”. Such a meeting was organised by the Spanish Technological Steel Platform – PLATEA ( Plataforma Tecnológica Española del Acero) and allowed IDENER to provide information to the attendees about the last developments that have been carried out as part of the R&D area devoted to Secure, clean and efficient energy.

Steel is nowadays an important material used daily by the human being (in fact, is the second material most used after concrete). The meeting agenda included several presentations devoted to offer information about how steel can provide answer to societal challenges such as energy production or nuclear applications, as well as information about how to valorise steel production wastes or human resources management in steel sector.

Within this frame IDENER presented to the audience the proposal “Effitemps”, which was submitted to the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS). Such proposal is aimed to improve energy efficiency and reduce CO₂ emissions of the steel industry by means of waste heat recovery from high-temperature processes. To that end, a bottom-up approach will be used to: evaluate waste heat recovery potentials; integrate existing recovery technologies as well as investigate innovative waste heat recovery solutions; and study potential users of the harvested energy. These investigations will serve as a basis of a systematic multi-criteria decision analysis. So as to further enhance project’s impact, an open-source software tool aimed to simulate and evaluate particular waste heat recovery routes will be developed and disseminated. “Effitemps” project consortium is formed by important steel sector actors such as Siderurgica Sevillana S.A. and Höganäs and the RTD performers Fraunhofer IWU and Swerea MEFOS.

The meeting was attended by PLATEA members, people related to this industry, universities, researchers and other steel related associations. Hence, cooperation and collaboration was triggered thanks to the wide exchange of information that took place. IDENER will therefore increase its possibilities related to go further developing steel industry solutions for energy efficiency improvement.