Valentina Colla

Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies | SSSUP · Institute of Communication, lnformation and Perception Technologies TECIP

The leaf area index determines crop health and growth. Traditional methods for calculating it are time-consuming, destructive, costly, and limited to a scale. In this study, we automate the index estimation method using drone image data of grapevine plants and a machine learning model. Traditional feature extraction and deep learning methods are us...

This paper aims at providing an overview of the ways for residue valorization in the iron and steelmaking industry. The important role of recycling in iron and steelmaking as a cornerstone for achieving a cleaner and resource-efficient potential is described. Several research results concerning metals and metal oxides (scrap, scale), slags, dusts,...

Direct reduction is considered a suitable alternative process for the transition of steelmaking route towards Clean processes. If direct reduction is performed with high percentage of hydrogen use in reducing gas, carbon dioxide emissions are expected to significantly decrease. However, investigations of the effects of integration of hydrogen-enric...

In the context of EU Green Deal ambitions, renewables can play a fundamental role in steel industry. Among them, biomass is an alternative and renewable carbon source, and it fits with the circular economy concept. However, these materials should meet specific requirements to be used. In order to investigate biomass upgrading for products to be use...

Manufacturing defects negatively affect production cost and environmental impact. This impact is even heavier for production processes that are particularly energy intensive, such as in the metallurgical industry. In the cast iron foundry sector, components manufacturing can be affected by various defects that depend on quality of raw materials fed...

Faults and cyber-attacks on industrial facilities have several common aspects. Both can severely damage equipment and plants, and harm the health of workers or even the environment. Both can create economic damage due to production stops or damage to connected equipment and facilities. To make the plant robust to cyber-attacks, a risk assessment mu...

La decarbonizzazione è uno degli obiettivi del settore siderurgico per soddisfare il Green Deal Europeo. Tuttavia, la transizione verso i cosiddetti processi "C-lean" non è priva di incertezze. Un processo che implica basse emissioni di carbonio è la riduzione diretta specie se effettuata con alti tenori di idrogeno nel gas riducente ma alcuni aspe...

La produzione di acciaio attraverso il ciclo elettrico soffre di una bassa diversificazione di fonti d'approvvigionamento energetico e, nell'ottica dell'efficientamento e della diminuzione dei costi, deve essere ottimizzata per diversi aspetti, tra i quali la pianificazione della produzione. Ottimizzare i costi di produzione significa ad esempio li...

Nel contesto della produzione dell'acciaio da forno elettrico, la gestione dell'energia è un fattore chiave per ridurre i costi di produzione garantendo la soddisfazione delle esigenze dei processi coinvolti. L'ottimizzazione dei consumi energetici della filiera produttiva dell'acciaio può essere raggiunta solo guardando contemporaneamente ai singo...

L'industria siderurgica produce una quantità rilevante di sottoprodotti e l'ottimizzazione della loro gestione e la loro valorizzazione sono elementi chiave per ridurre le emissioni ambientali e per migliorare la sostenibilità del processo produttivo evitando lo spreco di prodotti di valore. In particolare, le scorie rappresentano il sottoprodotto...

Il ruolo delle acciaierie elettriche è fondamentale per guidare l'industria siderurgica nella transizione verso processi più sostenibili e circolari. Il progetto europeo ALCHIMIA mira a minimizzare i consumi energetici e di risorse migliorando la carica del forno elettrico e la gestione dei processi tramite nuove tecnologie digitali avanzate, fra c...

In the production of High Strength Low Alloy (HSLA) steels with low carbon content markedly high yield strength (>600 MPa) can be achieved thanks to the possibility of finely control the microstructure resulting from appropriate thermomechanical cycles, as small additions (<0.1%) of strong carbide/nitride formers (Nb, Ti, V) is used to attain highe...

Oil-in-water emulsions (O/W-emulsions) are generally used to lubricate the cold rolling process of low-carbon steel. Besides the obvious advantages of efficient lubrication and cooling of the process, there are also some disadvantages mainly related to emulsion bath maintenance, subsequent production steps and waste disposal. In some application ar...

The acid pickling phase, generally entrusted to HCl-based solutions, plays a fundamental role in the production of low-C and Interstitial Free steel coils. Very often, however, pickling operations are challenging due to the possible onset of surface defects (under-pickling, over-pickling, appearance of surface defects, etc.) linked to complex pheno...

The book can be freely downloaded at the following link: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-35479-3

The possibility to estimate the Jominy profile of steel based on its chemical composition is of utmost importance and high practical relevance for industries, at enables a preliminary assessment of the suitability of a specific steel grade to a particular application or to the requirements of a customer, by saving time and resources as the Jominy e...

Over the last years, an ever-increasing level of automation has been observed in the steelworks. In this context, the European steel industry is committed to integrating new technologies in the production chain to evolve towards the Industry 4.0 paradigm and even beyond. The application of digital technologies aims at optimising the integration of...

When the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was established in 1952 to unite European countries economically and politically to secure long-lasting peace, steel production was one of the two main strategic industries in which a common European project was first launched. Today, the steel industry still represents a critical asset for the Euro...

The relative economic and political importance of the steel industry for the European project has decreased since the founding of the Economic Coal and Steel Community in 1952, but its absolute importance remains high and critical for the European project’s future success. However, for the continued survival of the European steel industry and among...

Optimizing the energy distribution in energy intensive industries is a difficult task. It requires a global vision for synchronizing the energy demands of all the involved processes. In this work, a decision support system is presented, which aims at supporting process operators and plant managers in monitoring and control of energy flows, e.g., pr...

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the most lethal of all gynecological cancers. Due to vague symptoms, OC is mostly detected at advanced stages, with a 5-year survival rate (SR) of only 30%; diagnosis at stage I increases the 5-year SR to 90%, suggesting that early diagnosis is essential to cure OC. Currently, the clinical need for an early, reliable diagnost...

This paper introduces a novel method for the estimation the Jominy profile of steel based on its composition, by combining autoencoders and 1-D Convolutional Neural Networks. The approach has two goals: firstly, to enhance the accuracy of hardenability prediction by exploiting the capability of the 1-D CNN to learn how the chemical composition of s...

Water is a fundamental steelworks additional resource; its efficient management is crucial for process reliability, product quality and environmental sustainability. Within steelworks, water is exploited mainly for direct or indirect cooling and is usually reused and recycled after cooling and treatments to eliminate contaminants. However, bottlene...

Integrated steelworks off-gases are generally exploited to produce heat and electricity. However, further valorization can be achieved by using them as feedstock for the synthesis of valuable products, such as methane and methanol, with the addition of renewable hydrogen. This was the aim of the recently concluded project entitled “Intelligent and...

Weight savings in mobility and transport are mandatory in order to reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption. The steel industry offers weight saving solutions by a growing portfolio of Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS) products. AHSS owe their strength to their largely refined and complex microstructures, containing multiple metallurgical phas...

Weight savings in mobility and transport are mandatory in order to reduce CO 2 emissions and energy consumption. The steel industry offers weight saving solutions by a growing portfolio of Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS) products. AHSS owe their strength to their largely refined and complex microstructures, containing multiple metallurgical pha...

Mechanical properties of steel are closely monitored during the manufacturing process through various non-destructive techniques. The IMPOC device implements one of them and is used by steel manufacturers at several locations of the production line. It provides a fast electromagnetic measurement that is strongly correlated with the microstructural...

Countless steel applications require both high ductility and strength, two properties that are usually inversely correlated even after different thermal or mechanical treatments have been used to affect them. The most adopted trade-off is hardened and tempered steel. Hardening is usually obtained by fast cooling (quenching) of the work after full a...

The reduction of hazardous air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions is increasingly required by steelworks. The purpose of this study is the definition of an additional blast furnace gas treatment when it is burned in hot blast stoves or in other users such as power plants. It was found that reducing cyanide in blast furnace gas through a spray-...

Nella laminazione di barre a sezione circolare, è fondamentale monitorare in maniera continuativa lo stato dei componenti principali del laminatoio e rivelare il prima possibile malfunzionamenti che possono degradare la qualità e la forma del prodotto, in maniera da poter programmare efficacemente interventi di manutenzione tempestivi. La presente...

Il paper propone la visione d'insieme e i concetti, nonché una panoramica delle attività sviluppate nell'ambito del progetto CyberMan4.0, cofinanziato dall'Unione europea attraverso il Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS), che mira a sviluppare un innovativo modello di manutenzione integrata applicabile nell'area di laminazione delle acciaierie....

In the steel sector, sustainable management of by-products is a key challenge to preserve natural resources and achieve the zero waste goal. In this paper, the main trends of future research and development on reuse and recycling of by-products of the steel industry are presented in the form of a roadmap, which is the outcome of a dissemination pro...

In the steel sector, within the production of high value hot rolled long products, assessment of components health and compliance with quality targets are fundamental aspects that need to be ensured. In this paper, an AI-based system for monitoring the conditions of the rolling process of bars with round section and estimating the final bars ovalit...

Viene proposto un nuovo approccio per la progettazione di componenti in acciaio da cementazione per applicazioni automobilistiche realizzati attraverso il processo di carburazione a gas a bassa pressione. Tale approccio si basa sull'identificazione della curva di temprabilità equivalente desiderata per conferire al componente le caratteristiche des...

The steel industry is one of the most energy-intensive sectors, as it requires a great amount of resources and produces a considerable quantity of by-products, with not negligible environmental impact. Therefore, the main challenge of steelworks consists in improving sustainability and reducing carbon footprint of the production process, by ensurin...

Technological development, closely related to the implementation of industrial symbiosis and en-ergy efficiency, affects all areas of energy intensive industries, and involves the whole industrial workforce. This paper deals with a part of the work developed in the early stage of a current Erasmus+ project, which aims at developing an industry-driv...

This review aims to show the significance of the use of secondary carbon bio-carriers for iron and steel production. The term 'secondary carbon bio-carriers' in this review paper refers to biomass, torrefied biomass, biochar, charcoal, or biocoke. The main focus is on torrefied biomass, which can act as a carbon source for partial or complete repla...

In the steelmaking scenario, wire rod is a product with a wide application in diverse sectors, among which automotive industry, construction, civil engineering due to its versatility. All these fields are very demanding in terms of quality; thus the fulfilment of strict quality requirements is one of the main concerns. Rolling is one of the main ph...

The steelmaking industry is a resource-intensive sector and is strongly committed to reducing its environmental footprint. One of the main exploited resources is water, therefore its sustainable management is a key element to lowering the environmental impact of the steel production process and implementing "Circular economy" principles. Water is e...

Digitalization is a key enabling factor of the dramatic transformation of metal industry since the 90-ies. Important applications were implemented since then, exploiting multi-physical modelling, complex real time process control and Machine Learning. This trend was further enhanced and accelerated by Industry 4.0. Digitalization implies harvesting...

L'acqua è una risorsa indispensabile per i processi di produzione dell'acciaio, viene sfruttata principalmente per il raffreddamento diretto o indiretto, ma anche per usi specifici. Attualmente, negli impianti siderurgici, la gestione dell'acqua non è sempre ottimizzata ed efficiente: fra le varie cause di inefficienza si annoverano il monitoraggio...

La produzione di acciaio da ciclo elettrico mostra vantaggi rispetto al ciclo integrale nell'ottica del concetto di Economia Circolare e dell'impatto ambientale. Tuttavia, le acciaierie elettriche sono energivore e la loro sfida principale consiste nel ridurre l'impronta di carbonio del processo, garantendo la qualità dei prodotti. Gli strumenti di...

The steel industry is an important engine for sustainable growth, value-added, and high-quality employment within the European Union. It is committed to reduce its CO2 emissions from production up to 50% by 2030 compared to 1990’s level ultimately reaching climate neutrality by 2050. This should be reached by developing and upscaling technologies r...

Nowadays the steel market is becoming ever more competitive for European steelworks, especially as far as flat steel products are concerned. As such competition determines the price products, profit can be increased only by lowering production and commercial costs. Production yield can be significantly increased through an appropriate scheduling of...

This work investigates the cost-efficient integration of renewable hydrogen into steelworks for the production of methane and methanol as an efficient way to decarbonize the steel industry. Three case studies that utilize a mixture of steelworks off-gases (blast furnace gas, coke oven gas, and basic oxygen furnace gas), which differ on the amount o...

Semantic tools are applied to evaluate the problem-solution-impact dependencies in EU research projects. A set of 46 projects was selected, which focused on automation and control research for steel production. The talk reports on assorted results and indicates how steel production could improve by adopting new technologies.

Citation: Hauser, A.; Wolf-Zoellner, P.; Haag, S.; Dettori, S.; Tang, X.; Mighani, M.; Matino, I.; Mocci, C.; Colla, V.; Kolb, S.; et al. Valorizing Steelworks Gases by Coupling Novel Methane and Methanol Synthesis

Within the design of a machine learning-based solution for classification or regression problems , variable selection techniques are often applied to identify the input variables, which mainly affect the considered target. The selection of such variables provides very interesting advantages, such as lower complexity of the model and of the learning...

Il settore siderurgico è fortemente impegnato nella gestione sostenibile dei suoi sottoprodotti, al fine di ridurre lo sfruttamento delle risorse naturali, il suo impatto ambientale e quindi raggiungere l’obiettivo "rifiuti zero" (“zero waste"). All’interno di un progetto di disseminazione finanziato dall’Unione Europea, è stata svolta una analisi...

With over 45 high profile research projects, funded by the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS), the project team revisited the problems, solutions, barriers and impact of these works. Using semantic tools like taxonomies and ontologies, it was possible to establish a database with project results at www.controlinsteel.com to allow people, stake...

This paper presents an Artificial Intelligence based tool for real-time estimation of ageing status of all the ladles operating within an electric steelworks. The developed system exploits real data collected and operators’ experience for tuning its core models and formulates the problem as a multi-class classification problem on a highly imbalance...

The new generation of steelworks shaped by Industry 4.0 are digitized, networked, flexible and adaptable. Production processes use distributed information and communication structures, are more autonomous and capable to react to dynamic evolutions of the environment. Cyber-physical systems are a fundamental component of Industry 4.0 and enable new...

Within integrated steelworks, process off-gases are important energy carriers. After suitable treatment, they are typically exploited for heating purposes and for production of steam and electricity. However, their main compounds (COx and H2) can also be valorized through synthesis reactors, which provide valuable products, such as methane and meth...

The implementation of Industrial Symbiosis and Energy Efficiency is linked to the ongoing technological development. New technologies can lead to an increased uptake of these concepts, which affect all areas of process industries and involve the whole workforce. The present paper describes part of the work developed in the early stage of a current...

A multi-agent system consists of several computational entities capable of autonomous actions, called agents, which communicate with each other, and have the ability to coordinate their actions and to cooperate. Multi-agent systems received a great interest and attention over time, as they can be seen as a key enabling technology for complex applic...

The valorization of integrated steelworks process off-gases as feedstock for synthesizing methane and methanol is in line with European Green Deal challenges. However, this target can be generally achieved only through process off-gases enrichment with hydrogen and use of cutting-edge syntheses reactors coupled to advanced control systems. These as...

This article presents the application of a recent neural network topology known as the deep echo state network to the prediction and modeling of strongly nonlinear systems typical of the process industry. The article analyzes the results by introducing a comparison with one of the most common and efficient topologies, the long short-term memories,...

The paper proposes an approach to the design of the chemical composition of steel, which is based on neural networks and genetic algorithms and aims at achieving a desired hardenability behavior possibly matching other constraints related to the steel production. Hardenability is a mechanical feature of steel, which is extremely relevant for a wide...

The concepts of Circular Economy and Industrial Symbiosis are nowadays considered by policy makers a key for the sustainability of the whole European Industry. Industry has always benefited form Circular Economy and Industrial Symbiosis; the challenge is to become fully circular. Steel has historically been central to modern economies, synonymous o...

In the era of European Green Deal, steelworks are committed to reduce their CO2 emissions by preserving their competitiveness. One of the options to achieve such aim is the valorization of process off-gases. Methane and Methanol production can be obtained by coupling novel reactors with an advanced control system that dispatches these gases after e...

The three pillars of sustainability represented by the environment, economy and society in the steel manufacturing industry are directly connected to the efficient and effective management of resources, such as energy, raw materials, by-products and water. This can also be beneficial for the mitigation of CO2 emissions directly or indirectly associ...

Nei processi di ricottura continua e nelle linee di zincatura a caldo, le strutture finali dell’acciaio dipendono fortemente dai parametri di processo (tempi e temperature) che quindi devono essere regolati con grande precisione. In particolare influiscono lo stazionamento breve in campo bifasico ferrite+austenite e il successivo processo di raffre...

In the production of steel strips, the ful llment of required product properties is a key factor to improve the company’s productivity and competitiveness. Product characteristics can be evaluated online throughout the length of the strip by means of non–destructive tests such as the IMPOC whose output signal is related to mechanical properties and...

In December 2014, the BBC [1] and the Heise Security Service [2] unanimously reported that a blast furnace in a German steelworks had suffered "massive damage" following sabotage of the plant's computer network. This information was based on a report by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) [3]. Today, in the age of Industry 4.0,...

Variable selection is an essential tool for gaining knowledge on a problem or phenomenon, by identifying the factors that shows the highest influence on it. It is also fundamental for the implementation of machine learning-based approaches to modelling and classification tasks, by improving performances and reducing computational cost. Furthermore,...

Over the last few decades, process industries have invested increasing efforts in developing technical and operating solutions related to industrial symbiosis and energy efficiency in both production processes and auxiliary services. In particular, new technologies that enable indus-trial symbiosis, such as novel treatment processes for byproduct e...

The steel industry is an important engine for sustainable growth, added value, and high-quality employment within the European Union. It is committed to reducing its CO2 emissions due to production by up to 50% by 2030 compared to 1990′s level by developing and upscaling the technologies required to contribute to European initiatives, such as the C...

The current flexibility of the energy market requires operating steam turbines that have chal-lenging operation requirements such as variable steam conditions and higher number of startups. This article proposes an advanced control system based on the Nonlinear Model Pre-dictive Control (NMPC) technique, which allows to speed up the start-up of ste...