Universiteit Leiden
Are you an enthusiastic early career researcher who is keen to work on integrated environmental assessment, offshore wind energy systems, biodiversity impacts, and life cycle assessment (LCA)? Are you interested in developing novel approaches to assess the ecological impacts of offshore wind farm installation and operation in the North Sea? Then this could be the ideal PhD position for you!
The European steel industry is undergoing a major transition to achieve climate neutrality while maintaining global competitiveness. Central to this transition is the replacement of conventional blast furnace–basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) steelmaking with lower-carbon electric arc furnace (EAF) production based on recycled scrap and direct reduced iron (DRI/HBI). Ensuring sufficient availability of high-quality feedstocks for these production routes is a key challenge, as future demand will increasingly require the use of more diverse and lower-quality material streams.
This PhD position is embedded in the Horizon Europe project DiversEAFy, an interdisciplinary consortium that aims to make future EAF steelmaking more resilient through feedstock upgrading, flexible mix design, AI-supported process steering, and valorization of EAF slags. The PhD candidate will contribute to understanding how future changes in material availability, steel quality, recycling systems, and technology deployment affect the environmental performance of the European steel sector and its transition towards a circular and low-carbon economy.
What you will do
The European steel industry is undergoing a major transition to achieve climate neutrality while maintaining global competitiveness. Central to this transition is the replacement of conventional blast furnace–basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) steelmaking with lower-carbon electric arc furnace (EAF) production based on recycled scrap and direct reduced iron (DRI/HBI). Ensuring sufficient availability of high-quality feedstocks for these production routes is a key challenge, as future demand will increasingly require the use of more diverse and lower-quality material streams.
This PhD position is embedded in the Horizon Europe project DiversEAFy, an interdisciplinary consortium that aims to make future EAF steelmaking more resilient through feedstock upgrading, flexible mix design, AI-supported process steering, and valorization of EAF slags. The PhD candidate will contribute to understanding how future changes in material availability, steel quality, recycling systems, and technology deployment affect the environmental performance of the European steel sector and its transition towards a circular and low-carbon economy.
The PhD is expected to cover:
Developing dynamic material flow analysis (dMFA) models to quantify steel stocks, flows, scrap generation, and scrap quality across the EU27, including the tracking of key impurities and tramp elements throughout the steel life cycle.
Assessing how product lifetimes, collection systems, sorting technologies, and recycling strategies influence the future availability and quality of scrap for electric arc furnace steelmaking.
Coupling material flow models with prospective life cycle assessment (LCA), market analysis, and technology deployment scenarios to evaluate future steel production pathways and circular economy strategies up to 2050.
Quantifying the environmental impacts of primary and secondary steel production under different future scenarios, including climate change, energy and resource use, water consumption, waste generation, and emissions, while conducting sensitivity and uncertainty analyses to assess the robustness of results.
The work will involve close collaboration with researchers working on metallurgy, industrial ecology, circular economy, life cycle assessment, and sustainability transitions within the DiversEAFy consortium.
Where you will work
The PhD candidate will be employed at Leiden University’s Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) and will work closely with partners in the DiversEAFy project.
The research combines expertise in industrial ecology, material flow analysis, life cycle assessment, circular economy, and sustainable industrial systems. Through DiversEAFy, the PhD candidate will collaborate with leading academic and industrial partners across Europe working on the future of low-carbon steel production.
Leiden University offers an inspiring interdisciplinary research environment with strong collaborations across academia, governmental organizations, and industry stakeholders working on sustainability transitions, circular economy strategies, and environmental assessment.
The position provides an excellent opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research supporting the decarbonization and circular transformation of one of Europe’s most important industrial sectors
Meer informatie/solliciteren: careers.universiteitleiden.nl.