Project Objectives by Work Package:

Work Package 1: Dissemination & project management

WP1 focuses on overcoming potential implementation barriers, ensuring broad and fast dissemination of project results, and achieving the targeted project impacts. Key objectives include addressing the needs of identified target groups, integrating public feedback, and keeping stakeholders informed. WP1 also involves continuous monitoring of project progress and milestones to ensure strategic alignment and timely delivery of results.

Work Package 2: Planning and preparation

WP2 lays the foundation for the construction of the CLH demonstrator by fulfilling all necessary technical and infrastructural prerequisites. This includes adapting the CLH pilot plant for the valorisation of blast furnace gas (BFG) and developing a tailor-made oxygen-carrier metamaterial that is both durable and efficient for long-term use (KER1). The work package also covers the preparation of the plant construction area, provision of utilities, and collection of key process parameters to ensure optimal demonstrator design. Moreover, WP2 enables full digitalisation via an Edge AIoT system, including advanced 3D transient CFD simulations, and delivers all essential technical documentation and manuals needed for the demonstrator’s construction.

Work Package 3: On-site demonstration of hydrogen production from chemical looping

WP3 is dedicated to the successful demonstration of the CLH technology in an integrated steel plant environment. This includes the physical construction of the demonstrator (KER3) and the execution of all validation tests to prove its operational applicability (KER2). The oxygen-carrier metamaterial (KER1), as well as the overall process design and control strategy, will be optimised to enhance efficiency and reduce hydrogen production costs. WP3 also delivers a fully validated digital demonstrator based on Edge AIoT and CFD (KER3), and systematically collects and analyses operational data (KER2) to support further development.

Work Package 4: Economical evaluation & Exploitation

WP4 targets the economic evaluation and exploitation of the project results to enable commercial deployment. This includes extending CLH applicability to basic oxygen furnace (BOF) gas and performing technical and economic assessments of all results. WP4 will generate a comprehensive assessment of integration scenarios for current and future steel production pathways (KER4), including a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the environmental benefits from H₂Loop. A concept for scaling up CLH to industrial-level metallurgical gas valorisation will be developed (KER5), along with extended valorisation concepts for CO₂ and heat/steam. Additionally, the integration of CLH at the industrial ADI site in Taranto will be examined, and recommendations for roll-out across different steel plant configurations will be provided (KER4). The work package concludes with a business model canvas outlining strategies and tools for market exploitation (KER5).