European innovation projects for green industries 

Recently, the webinar “Revolutionizing Green Industries: Cutting-Edge Digital Solutions for Steel Decarbonization” took place. Organized in collaboration with the European projects Flex4Fact, Twinghy, and Alchimia, the event focused on how these projects are addressing key challenges in the steel industry through the use case of CELSA, a leading European steel company in low-emission circular production. 

CELSA Group, with its strategy to become a Net Positive company by 2050, is leading the transition towards more sustainable steel production. Each project presented concrete solutions to address the challenges mentioned by Anna Domènech, Head of Innovation, in the presentation of the company’s innovation strategy. 

Flex4Fact Project: Develops a modular and multi-level ecosystem to enable flexible manufacturing in energy-intensive industries. It uses digital twins of industrial processes to increase energy flexibility and valorize energy surpluses through reuse, facilitating the integration of renewable energy sources. Represented by Matteo Ranaboldo from CITCEA_UPC, responsible for developing an algorithm to plan production based on electricity cost forecasts. 

Twinghy Project: Aims to introduce hydrogen to replace natural gas in reheating furnaces through digital twins that monitor current operations and introduce new burners that will combine oxygen, natural gas, and hydrogen. The current development of the project was presented by Johannes Losacker from IOB at Aachen University. 

Alchimia Project: Digitizes large European metallurgical industries to unlock the potential of artificial intelligence and support green growth. It implements decentralized AI solutions to optimize the mix of recycled materials in steel manufacturing processes, reducing energy consumption and emissions. Stefano Dettori presented the Ladle furnace model developed by SSSA along with Aitor Alcazar (Eviden), who presented Federated Learning as a new approach for interrelation between different plants of the same group. 

The positive reception of this webinar, reflected in the number of participants, demonstrated that collaboration and knowledge exchange are key to creating a collaborative environment for stakeholders involved in decarbonization projects. 

Watch the webinar:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4JEvVWteiA