ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe employee in Duisburg wins international steel award

For research work carried out in connection with his doctoral thesis, Dr. Michael Skorianz, an employee of ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe AG in Duisburg, is to receive this year’s “Korf Award for Young Excellence”. The honor is bestowed on outstanding young scientists in the iron and steel industry. The award ceremony will take place in New York on June 17 as part of the “Steel Success Strategies” conference. “It’s not every day that one of our young, highly qualified employees wins such a renowned, international award, and that makes us even prouder of this achievement,” says Dr. Arnd Köfler, head of crude steel production at ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe. “We are delighted that Dr. Skorianz can now continue to develop his potential at our company.”

How can iron making be made more efficient and at the same time less energy consuming? Dr. Skorianz examined this question in a joint project with an equipment manufacturer and an Asian steel producer in connection with his doctoral thesis at Montanuniversität Leoben in Austria. The young Austrian’s thesis delivered the first scientific evidence to support this general possibility – laying the groundwork for a technology that has already been used in the development and construction of a new fluidized bed reactor.

“The research results show that the process can be made significantly more efficient and less energy-intensive,” says Dr. Skorianz. His work also studied various iron ores available on the market to find out which are most suitable for iron making under these conditions. Here again, the results are already feeding into production and making an important contribution to other processes based on fluidized bed technology. “The big challenge lay not only in the scientific work itself, but also in coordinating the complex processes so as to achieve interpretable results,” says Skorianz.

Honored with the “Willy Korf Award for Young Excellence”

His work impressed not only his industrial project partners but also the committee of the “Willy Korf Foundation”, which will be presenting this year’s award to Dr. Skorianz at the “Steel Success Strategies” conference in New York on June 17 in recognition of the research he carried out for his thesis. The award is presented annually to bright minds in the steel sector in memory of Willy Korf, “the steel baron of Baden” who built up a global steel empire before losing his life in a plane crash in 1990.

“Steelmaker” at ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe

Dr. Skorianz (32) joined ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe in November 2013, where he is one of the people responsible for developing and optimizing steel production processes with the aim of improving steel quality. As project manager he is also in charge of ThyssenKrupp’s contributions towards optimizing the “HIsarna” pilot project – a reduction process to extract pig iron directly from fine ores and coal that is being developed to commercial scale in a collaborative effort by renowned European steel producers.

“My first contact with ThyssenKrupp came at an early stage, to be more exact during the year I spent studying at RWTH Aachen University. But this contact was not deepened until my time at the Institut für Eisen- und Stahlmetallurgie at Montanuniversität Leoben,” explains the proud ThyssenKrupp employee. ThyssenKrupp sponsored an excursion by the institute to Brazil, which Dr. Skorianz helped organize on behalf of the university along with Eliezer Dias from ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe. Further collaboration between company and university culminated in an agreement in 2012 aimed at strengthening scientific cooperation and providing support for the young engineers. In addition, Dr. Skorianz also undertook numerous international assignments in Brazil, Romania and Canada and presented the results of his work at conferences around the world.