The European Health and Digital Executive Agency has highlighted three Clean Steel Partnership projects developing alternatives to conventional fossil-fuel heating across electric arc furnaces and downstream steel processing, including hydrogen burners, induction systems, heat recovery and renewable carbon.
GreenHeatEAF, HyTecHeat and ModHEATech are funded through Horizon Europe and address different parts of the production chain rather than promoting one universal replacement technology. Their common problem is industrial heat: steelmaking continues to require large quantities of high-temperature energy even as primary production and electricity supply are decarbonised.
Energy cost is already a significant part of European steelmaking economics. New heating technologies therefore have to reduce emissions without adding enough capital, fuel or operating cost to leave plants structurally less competitive against producers outside Europe.
GreenHeatEAF is focused on electric arc furnace steelmaking. EAFs can reduce dependence on the coal-intensive route associated with conventional blast furnaces, particularly when recycled scrap forms the main feedstock, but fossil fuels can still be used for auxiliary heating and other process functions.
The project is testing hydrogen and renewable carbon sources such as biochar as substitutes while also examining how more energy can be recovered from hot off-gas and slag. Digital applications are being combined with pilot testing to improve heat management around the furnace.
Recovering that energy is technically demanding because an EAF is not a steady thermal source. Scrap composition, furnace cycle, power input and gas conditions change from one heat to the next, while dust and harsh temperatures place additional requirements on equipment exposed to the exhaust stream.
A heat-recovery system therefore has to cope with a highly variable process without creating excessive maintenance or disrupting steel production. Captured energy is only valuable if it can be transferred into a useful process at the time and temperature required elsewhere in the plant.
HyTecHeat tackles a different section of steel production. Its work centres on downstream furnaces, where semi-finished steel is reheated before rolling and further processing.
The project is developing multifuel burners capable of increasing the proportion of hydrogen used in those furnaces and is testing operating limits through three demonstration cases. It is also examining how new combustion conditions affect refractories, furnace systems and the quality of the steel itself.
Replacing natural gas with hydrogen changes more than the carbon content of the fuel. Flame characteristics, heat transfer and combustion chemistry differ, creating consequences for burner design and furnace operation.
Product quality is another constraint. Heating conditions influence oxidation and scale formation on the surface of steel, and defects introduced during reheating can persist into the final rolled product. A decarbonisation measure that increases rejection or rework rates would undermine part of its environmental and economic benefit.
HyTecHeat is therefore studying process parameters capable of preventing primary scale and related surface defects from carrying through the line. That places metallurgical quality inside the heating-development programme rather than treating it as a problem for downstream inspection.
ModHEATech is taking a hybrid route in rolling mills. The project combines conventional gas-based heating with partial electrification, including induction heating, while also seeking to improve heat recovery.
Induction provides a different way of placing energy into steel because electrical energy generates heat directly in the conductive material rather than first heating a furnace atmosphere. It can respond quickly and can be introduced at specific positions in a production line, although electrical demand and equipment cost influence where it is practical.
A hybrid approach also provides flexibility while energy infrastructure remains uncertain. Full electrification of a high-temperature process may require major increases in grid connection capacity, while full conversion to hydrogen depends on sufficient low-carbon fuel being available at an acceptable price.
Combining several technologies can allow a plant to reduce fossil-energy consumption without waiting for one energy vector to meet every process requirement. The result may ultimately vary substantially between sites according to equipment age, product mix, local electricity capacity and access to hydrogen.
The three projects sit within the European Clean Steel Partnership, which combines EU research funding with industry programmes intended to move lower-carbon steel technologies towards industrial demonstration.
Their work also illustrates why steel decarbonisation extends beyond the higher-profile debate over blast furnaces and direct-reduced iron. Steel is reheated, rolled and treated after primary production, and those downstream operations continue to consume large quantities of energy.
The European Commission’s steel policy increasingly links decarbonisation with energy cost and industrial competitiveness. For plant operators, that means low-carbon heating systems will be assessed against uptime, maintenance, product quality and operating cost as well as emissions reduction.
A burner capable of using hydrogen has limited industrial value if fuel remains unavailable or excessively expensive. An electric heating system is similarly constrained where a site cannot obtain the additional grid capacity it needs.
GreenHeatEAF, HyTecHeat and ModHEATech are therefore testing a portfolio rather than searching for one technology capable of replacing every existing furnace. Hydrogen, biochar, induction heating and recovered heat address different parts of the process and may ultimately be combined inside the same steelworks.
The useful outcome will be evidence about where each technology works, what modifications existing plants require and whether steel quality can be maintained while fossil-energy use falls. Those are less dramatic questions than announcing a green-steel target, but they are the engineering details that determine whether an operating mill can actually achieve one.
