Monitoring the environmental and energy impacts of electric arc furnace steelmaking

The problem of rating the environmental impact of industrial plants has been widely studied in recent years with a specific focus on CO₂ emission and energy consumption. On the contrary, only limited attention has been paid to the evaluation of the resource efficiency and overall environmental impact of industrial plants. This paper presents the first results of the research project entitled "Environmental Impact Evaluation and Effective Management of Resources in the EAF Steelmaking" (EIRES), which aims at a plant-oriented approach with an internal reporting of environmental and energy issues. For this purpose, several Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have been selected both from literature and operational practices, which can be easily interpreted by plant operators and managers. Furthermore a software tool has been implemented which allows to follow the evolution of these KPIs over time. The tool is not intended to compare the environmental performance of different companies, but to provide a practical support to the personnel of each single steelwork, in order to have an updated overview on the way the processes in the plant are operated from an environmental perspective and in order to identify measures and modifications of operational practices allowing to lower the environmental footprint of the production cycle.