Environmental impact evaluation for effective resource management in EAF steelmaking

The assessment of the environmental impact of steelworks has been intensively discussed in the last decades, especially focusing on CO2 emissions and energy consumptions. Nowadays an increasing attention is paid to the evaluation of the resource efficiency and overall environmental impact; some work groups also focused on the development of various eco-efficiency indicators. ISO Standards are available for the environmental management system (ISO14000) and for GHG emission quantification (ISO14064) together with the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). However, a practical and comprehensive metric to quantify and monitor the different aspects contributing to the overall resource efficiency especially of an electric steelmaking is not yet available. The paper presents first results of the currently running research project entitled "Environmental Impact Evaluation and Effective Management of Resources in the EAF Steelmaking" (EIRES), which receives funding by the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS). Within this project several Key Performance Indicators were selected in order to monitor the environmental performance of the whole steelmaking process in terms of energy consumption, water and air emissions, by-products and waste management. A tool was implemented in order to follow the temporal evolution of these KPIs on both real and simulated data, and suitable simulation models have been developed for scenario analyses.