The team aims to develop software that allows the most appropriate pickling programme to be chosen for each metal, thus reducing the environmental and economic cost involved in this process.
Optimising current resources in steel manufacturing has become a necessity for factories, both regionally and across Europe. In fact, Asturias is a benchmark in the production of this alloy, given its deep-seated history in steelmaking, and the region is home to internationally acclaimed companies, which is why research in steelmaking processes is so important to the Asturian industry.
Both the steel industry and the educational community are therefore both keen to improve the processes used to obtain this material, by participating in projects that reduce the economic and environmental impact. This is indeed the case in the latest research programme in which the University of Oviedo is participating. The key target is to produce better quality steel by developing software that enables the most suitable pickling programme to be selected for each metal.
The expected outcome of the research is to reduce the acids used in the pickling process and to reduce environmental emissions, as well as financial costs, as this process is one of the most expensive for the steel and metalworking industry sector, with the risk of not achieving the desired metal.
As the University of Oviedo research group points out, “an inappropriate pickling process gives way to lower quality products, rejection and loss of material, and it also has a high economic and environmental cost”.
There are already satisfactory studies regarding the importance of optimising quality during the steel manufacturing process, which act as a point of reference and a base line for the study undertaken by the research team.
