Challenges are easy to be found in the steel industry these days. Many are technical in nature, others have a deeper (geopolitical and societal) origin. Luckily: for most challenges part of the solution lies in technological progress. That is why we were proud to participate in the 7th ESTAD conference in Verona, Italy (Oct 6th - 9th 2025).
The participants enjoyed a 3-day program packed with talks about a wide range of topics, from basic iron- and steelmaking, alloying approaches, over to casting and forming operations, such as rolling. Also more general topics such as carbon emission reduction and alternative production routes were highlighted. The research presented originated from academic institutions, research centers, but also steel companies and solution providers.
A lot of attention went into topics such as (Finite Element) modeling for process development and validation, and to developing and implementing new sensors for process control, but also for model tuning and optimisation. Both are key elements in the development of a virtual process twin that can help in further optimization of the production itself. Following today's hype, also a lot of AI was included in the talks. Some of them were a bit dissapointing, relying on decision tree models to determine optimal process settings, or the nth illustration of an LLM applied as a chatbot. Others were very interesting, including some transfer learning applications and LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) examples. All of these, when taking into account quality of data and a proper data pre-processing stage can really create breakthrough improvements!
Other observations are:
- Low-termperature Electrolysis (like the Volteron project) is developing as one of the options to make iron "at scale"
- Closing down blast furnaces is a way to drastically reduce carbon emissions, but we see a multitude of adaptations to the blast furnace process that each can help reducing the overall emissions generated by such an installation. An interesting addition to the mix.
- The steel industry is only one of the many competitors in the game to obtain the available hydrogen, today and tomorrow. The competition will be fierce, so an increasing number of non-hydrogen using pathways are proposed.
We ourselves were happy to present the background of a totally new technology to determine the amount of Hot Heel in an EAF (Electric Arc Furnace). Our presentation generated quite some interest from the audience, highlighting the willingness of the sector to look for technological solutions that can help decreasing the energy consumption during the steel produciton process.
The conference was super well organized, and every time of the day there was at least one inspiring or thought-provoking contribution in one of the seven(!) parallel sessions. For us it is certain: we'll be back in 2027, this time in Düsseldorf (Germany)!
ESTAD 2025
was organized by AIM: Associazione Italiana di Metallurgia
In collaboration with Siderweb
With the support of Federacciai and Fondazione Promozione Acciaio