Fives Completes Testing of New Reheating Burner for 100% Hydrogen Fuel Capability

Its industrial integration will contribute to decarbonizing the reheating process and represents an important milestone for the steel industry. This important achievement was presented at the 4th TWINGHY General Assembly on October 8-9, 2024 in Madrid, Spain.

The new AdvanTek^® burner development began 18 months ago as part of the TWINGHY project. The consortium, co-funded by the European Union, brings together academic and industrial partners to reduce CO2 emissions from reheating furnaces using hybrid burners and digital twin technology.

Key test measurements
AdvanTek^® burner prototype recently passed key measurement tests in Bar-Le-Duc, France, meeting the requirements for NOx emissions, structure and heating profile. The burner can run on a mix of natural gas and hydrogen and is designed to maintain the same productivity even when hydrogen content is reduced.

“These tests have shown that it is possible to use hydrogen burners to decarbonize the steel industry. Thanks to our expertise in thermal reheating, we were able to design and develop a new hybrid burner that uses multiple energy sources to reduce CO2 and NOx emissions. This burner will help steelmakers achieve environmentally friendly performance,” says Sébastien Caillat, R&D Combustion Chief Expert at Fives Stein, a Fives subsidiary specialized in thermal technology.

Industrial integration
The next step of the project includes revising the existing furnace design to accommodate the newly validated AdvanTek^® burners in Celsa’s furnace no. 3 in Barcelona, Spain. In the summer of 2025, eight full-size hybrid burners will be installed in an existing walking beam furnace with a capacity of 180 tonnes per hour. They will be the first of their kind to be installed on an industrial scale.

“Over the next few months, we will be involved in a challenging project: we have to ensure that the new, larger burners and their electrical and piping systems are correctly installed in the limited furnace footprint. This is the final step before the industrial integration of the burners, which will be a world first in the steel industry,” says Oiane Gerrikagoitia, Calculation and R&D Manager at Fives Steel Spain, a Fives subsidiary.

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