Resumen
As one carbon neutral source, biocoal will play an important role to facilitate the transition of
the European steel industry towards processes decarbonization. The BioReSteel project focuses on
exploring, developing and utilizing hydrochar (one type of biocoal), derived from various locally
available biomass residues via the hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) process, in the electric arc
furnace (EAF) process. HTC unblocks to valorization of residual wet biomass feedstocks, which makes
the hydrochar more economically competitive. Given the abundant biomass residues available in
Europe, the hydrochar produced from only a few percent (< 2%) is sufficient to supply all operating
EAF steel plants in Europe. By estimation, around 840,000 t fossil coal can be substituted by
hydrochar at today's steel production level from EAF process, leading to a reduced fossil C02
emission of about 2.5 Mt per year. As additional sustainability aspects, phosphorus from residual
biomass will be returned into circular economy saving resources of a critical raw material. In
addition, heavy metals will be collected for decontamination of products and environment.
BioReSteel will be conducted by a strong international team with required competences and
complementary knowledges. The project will cover the whole value chain from biomass feedstocks,
hydrochar production by an industrial HTC plant, up to its use in the EAF steelmaking of green
steel. The project will consider all technical, economic and sustainability aspects. The BioReSteel
concept will be proved by an experimental study
trials will be performed at three EAF plants to test hydrochar
njection, hydrochar top charging and bio-oxides agglomerates in order to prove the concept's
flexibility and generality.
