CIRCOM: Turning Our Waste into Strategic Resources

At Reinosa Forgings & Castings, we continue to advance towards a more sustainable and circular production model. The CIRCOM project represents an important step in that direction: we have worked on valorising our own black slag and transforming it into new materials for internal industrial use, reducing dependence on conventional raw materials while lowering the environmental impact of our manufacturing processes.
Throughout the project, three sub-products were developed from this steelmaking by-product:

• An alternative granular material replacing conventional aggregates in internal applications.
• An advanced inorganic binder with improved technical performance and a lower environmental footprint.
• A refractory concrete designed to withstand the thermal demands of large steel component manufacturing.

Before industrial application, these materials were validated at laboratory scale together with our technology partners AIMEN, AZTERLAN and ITC. The testing programme evaluated not only their technical performance but also their emission profile during the casting process, comparing the results with conventional systems and confirming significant advances in both worker safety and environmental health.

The next step was to bring these results into real industrial conditions. Two industrial demonstrators were manufactured at our facilities, verifying the integration of these materials under the same operational and thermal demands that define our day-to-day industrial activity.

For us, CIRCOM is more than an R&D project. It demonstrates how circular economy principles can be applied within our own industrial operations, closing internal material loops and transforming by-products into resources with real strategic value.

The CIRCOM project (CPP2021-008798) has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the State Research Agency (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and by the European Union – NextGenerationEU through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.