Abstract
The efficient use of water resources is one of the main challenges of the steel sector, according to the European Union water policy. On this subject, monitoring and optimization systems, linked to the innovative water treatments, represent important tools to improve water management and the related energy use. The present paper describes a part of the work developed in the early stage of the project entitled “Water and related energy Hub Advanced Management system in steelworks – WHAM”, which is co-funded by the Research Fund for Coal and Steel. The project aims at optimizing water consumption in the steelworks through a holistic combination of on-line monitoring and optimisation and innovative water treatment technologies. As different aspects affect water use in the steelmaking processes, in the first part of the paper, the main technical barriers and factors, that can impact on reuse and recirculation of wastewater and energy efficiency, are analysed. The main constraints on water management in the steel sector, such as fresh water availability, its quality and local legal requirements, were considered in order to maximise the water reuse and recycling. Furthermore, the main barriers, such as environmental issues and several costs, were investigated. In the second part of the paper, a set of Key Performance Indicators are listed. They aim at assessing and monitoring the water management sustainability in a holistic way, both in terms of environmental and economic performances, as well as of new water treatments efficiency and their economic viability. Key Performance Indicators will be used to monitor the efficiency of water management, aiming at achieving significant increase of performances. On the other hand, some of these indicators will be used as objective functions for problems optimization. The computation of the selected Key Performance Indicators will take into account both industrial data and results from simulations that will be carried out after the development of suitable tools in order to assess the feasibility of some relevant process modifications or the applications of new technologies.
Highlights
Among its priorities, the steel industry is committed to use water in a sustainable way in order to follow the Circular Economy principles and obtaining all related advantages from economic, environmental and social point of view
A list of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) was proposed, which were selected within an ongoing EUfunded research project, aiming at optimizing the water networks management in steelworks by minimizing the freshwater consumption
Some KPIs will be used as objective functions, as they are or after ad-hoc adaptations, for the optimization problems that are under development
Summary
The steel industry is committed to use water in a sustainable way in order to follow the Circular Economy principles and obtaining all related advantages from economic, environmental and social point of view. Using water and related energy in a more appropriate way, through the closed circuit monitoring and the water leakages reduction, is a priority and there is room for improvement in optimization potential On this subject, developing and implementing an integrated water management strategy with water reuse and recycle [4], applying the Best Available Techniques [5] for the wastewater treatments, aim at reducing the environmental impacts. Most commonly lead to lack of efficiency within industrial water networks and water treatment processes as well as the factors influencing wastewater reuse, recirculation, energy efficiency and efficiency of monitoring systems In this context, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are tools that make the quantification of environmental, economic and social performances possible.
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