The steel industry is one of the largest contributors to global CO₂ emissions, yet steel remains a critical material for the economy and for enabling the climate transition. Therefore, steel production must become cleaner and more circular. In the Dutch consortium ‘Groeien met Groen Staal’, partners collaborate to accelerate the shift toward green steel. Tata Steel IJmuiden produces about 7 million tonnes of steel annually, roughly equal to national consumption. This results in approximately 12 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions per year—around 7% of the Dutch total. About 90% of these emissions are linked to producing liquid steel from iron ore in blast furnaces. To reduce its emissions by 30% by 2030, Tata Steel plans to replace one blast furnace with a more sustainable production route. This route involves reducing iron ore pellets in a Direct Reduction Plant (DRP) to produce Direct Reduced Iron (DRI), which is then melted in an electric furnace. The Reducing Electric Furnace (REF) is a potential technology for producing high-grade steel, but it has not yet been proven for melting DRI pellets. In the REF, DRI pellets and additives are fed from the top, forming a solid feed pile that penetrates the slag and molten metal layers, where heat is transferred from electrodes. A key uncertainty in this process is how the feed pile forms and behaves under varying conditions, driven by its interactions with the slag and molten metal layers. This PhD project aims to improve understanding of REF operation by modeling feed pile formation using the Discrete Element Method (DEM), coupled with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate interactions with slag and molten metal. As a first step, this study presents a review of the key physical and chemical phenomena, along with an initial DEM model and preliminary results on feed pile formation