Description

High-temperature industries such as steel, cement, and glass are fundamental pillars of the European economy and depend on refractory materials for safe, energy-efficient, and sustainable operation. These advanced ceramic materials, which withstand service conditions at temperatures typically above 1,000 °C, represent less than 3% of production costs yet can drive up to 20% of operating efficiency through energy losses, maintenance requirements, and downtime. Against the backdrop of the European Green Deal and the ongoing digital transition, the refractory sector faces urgent challenges: decarbonisation, circularity, and digitalisation. Current practices remain constrained by empirical design approaches, fragmented data landscapes, and low recycling rates, while emerging regulations such as the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) increasingly demand traceability and reduced carbon footprints.

REFFRACTEUR (Digital REFractory FRAmework for a Carbon-neutral and Resilient indusTry in EURope) is a Horizon Europe-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network – Industrial Doctorate (MSCA-DN-ID) under grant agreement no. 101312113. The project unites a unique consortium of 26 partners – 10 academic institutions, 11 industrial companies, and 5 non-profit organisations – spanning the entire refractory value chain. The network is coordinated by the Institut de Recherche sur les Céramiques (IRCER, CNRS) in Limoges, France. REFFRACTEUR trains 15 Doctoral Candidates (DCs) in the Industrial Doctorate format: each DC spends at least 50% of their time in industry and benefits from dual academic/industrial supervision. The programme builds on the predecessor networks ATHOR and CESAREF.

 

Project topics overview

© REFFRACTEUR

The research is structured around three scientific work packages: WP1 addresses applied digitalisation and circularity (digital product passports, life cycle assessment, AI-driven sorting); WP2 focuses on innovative microstructure design for sustainable refractory materials; and WP3 targets operational optimisation through physics-informed digital twins and decision-support systems. Together, these work packages form a continuous innovation loop in which operational data from industry informs material design, and digital tools integrate performance, sustainability, and operational insights to guide future improvements.

The Institute of Energy Systems and Thermodynamics (IET) at TU Wien is responsible for the academic supervision of DC15 in collaboration with the industrial partner FESIOS, leads Task 3.3 (Optimization Algorithms and Decision Support) within WP3, and contributes to Task 3.4 (Pilot Implementation and Industrial Integration, led by Tata Steel).

DC15 focuses on the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) for optimising ladle management under dynamic and sustainable conditions in steel production (BOF/EAF contexts). A central research theme is the investigation of replacing conventional natural gas burners used for ladle preheating and drying with renewable alternatives – such as electric heating systems or hydrogen-fired burners. The DSS quantitatively evaluates these transition scenarios in terms of energy consumption, CO₂ emissions, availability, and operating costs, thereby providing a rigorous decision-making basis for the decarbonisation of melt-shop operations. Methodologically, the system combines predictive analytics (condition monitoring, remaining useful life estimation, temperature loss modelling) with prescriptive optimisation (dispatching, maintenance scheduling), coupling exact, heuristic, and metaheuristic methods as well as reinforcement learning with a discrete-event simulation of a virtual melt shop. The DSS ingests outputs from the digital twins developed in WP3 and closes the feedback loop to the digital product passports and life cycle assessment tools of WP1. Industrial secondments are planned at Tata Steel (Netherlands).