TORRECID opens its facilities to demonstrate the functioning of the furnaces developed in the VULKANO project

This marks the achievement of one of the demonstrator's objectives, focused on implementing the VULKANO solution in one of its industrial furnaces to increase its energy and environmental efficiency. In this case, the demonstrator will validate three of the strategies that make up the integrated VULKANO solution: the newly developed refractories, associated monitoring systems, and the holistic and predictive tool.

The VULKANO project is centered on designing, implementing, and validating an integrated solution to enhance and increase both the energy and environmental efficiency of industrial furnaces powered by natural gas and their adjacent processes.

The integrated VULKANO solution consists of five strategies: new refractories that overcome the durability limitations of the current ones, new co-combustion systems that are more efficient for replacing natural gas with biogas, new algorithms to improve control systems, and a holistic and predictive tool to evaluate and parameterize various plant variables and indicators for better decision-making by applying a life cycle perspective.

The VULKANO solution is being implemented in two real-life facilities, one in the ceramics sector (in Spain) and another in the steel sector (Slovenia), as well as validating the replication feasibility in a third sector, aluminum (in Turkey).

We visited the TORRECID plant, the event's host partner and leader of the VULKANO demonstration in the ceramics sector, where we had the opportunity to see the furnace already in operation.

The meeting, which was attended by 27 participants from the 12 consortium partners, addressed topics such as the consolidation and enhancement of the results, the final stretch of the project (four months before its completion) to establish timelines and strategies for developing its maximum effectiveness, and the continuity of the innovative VULKANO solution post-project.