This paper presents a system for supporting hydropower production on mountainous areas. The system couples the outputs of a numerical weather prediction model and a snow melting and accumulation temperature-based model. Several procedures are presented for interpolating meteorological variables and calibrating and validating model parameters that can be generalized to any other mountainous area where the estimation of current and forecasted snow water equivalent and melting amount is required. The system reliability has been assessed through the validation of three components: spatial interpolation of meteorological data, mathematical modeling, and quantitative meteorological forecast. The results show that good accuracy of meteorological data spatial interpolation can be achieved when the data from snow gauges are used for assessing the precipitation lapse rate at higher altitudes, and the temperature lapse rate is computed from data at each time step. The temperature-based hydrological model proved to be effective in simulating lake inflow water volume and energy production. No clear result has been found for snow melt forecast due to the difficulties in providing reliable quantitative weather forecast in complex alpine area.

The Fines2EAF project aims to increase the value of Electric Arc Furnace steelmaking residues by their internal recycling and reuse in form of cement-free briquettes. The project sustainability for a profitable fines' recirculation pass through the conservation of steel and slag quality in terms of chemistry, physics and eco friendliness. To do this, industrial trials have been conducted by the charging of self-reducing and slag-former briquettes made by primary and secondary fines materials. Several slag samples supplied from three different European EAF steel shops have been analysed. The specimens have been characterized by XRF, XRD and SEM to thoroughly define their crystallography, morphology and microstructure. The comparison with the corresponding reference samples (i.e., slag produced without the fines recirculation) also allowed to highlight the differences present. Leaching tests have been conducted on reference and briquette-added slag according to EN 12457-4 standard to assess the compliant with the local environmental regulation. The obtained results highlighted that the slag obtained using cement-free briquettes made by steelmaking fines exhibits crystallographic and morphological properties very similar to the reference samples, with limited differences attributed to slag and scrap feedstock intrinsic heterogeneity. No relevant increase in the leachate concentration could be detected when compared to reference samples and the influence of raw-material fines recirculation into the EAF could be considered at worst negligible, if not positive for some elements like Ba ( − 22.86%), V ( − 13.19%) and W ( − 14.83%). Considering all the analyses performed, no adverse effect on slag quality could be detected.