R&I areas that needs to be tackled should address some of these aspects:

• Selection and integration of best available and applicable technologies to reduce impurities in post-consumer scrap before melting together with scrap yard management supported by digital smart tools for scrap classification and charge optimization; these are key elements to increase the use of scrap achieving the same quality of the finished product in both, the EAF, and BF/BOF route and at the same time reducing CO2 emissions due to lower energy need with respect to iron-ore;
• The projects should ensure involvement of operators and process experts in development and implementation of Big Data, ensuring the uptake of human experiences and a user-friendly processing of results;
• Realisation of demonstration plants at relevant industrial scale focusing on material upgrading technologies as well as inline characterization of ferrous materials via novel technologies for onsite characterization.
• Development and implementation of highly efficient technologies for recovering metals and mineral fraction from steelmaking residues, including those coming from H2-based metallurgy ones, with high metallic or oxidic fractions; two possible ways are envisioned, whereas the first one is based on cooling and mechanical steps, such as wet or dry granulation followed by phase separation; the second one relies on a direct recycling of residues in existing production processes or in dedicated pyrometallurgic melting and reduction units;
• Full by-product testing and evaluation to have them covered by a standard like a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) or by a national technical agreement;
• Enabling the use of obtained by-products in higher value applications (i.e. filtering, coating, additive manufacturing, material for CO2 sequestration, heat accumulator);
• Integration of energy recovery solutions in metal recovery processes targeting at a better Return of Investment.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on Clean Steel.