Page 21 - Steel Tech India eMagazine Volume January 2021

81. Ŗ 01 Ŗ ,CPWCT[

Engineering the Green Revolution of

Ironmaking – A Minimally Impacting Route to

the De-Carbonisation of Existing Ironmaking

Plants

1
2
Paolo STAGNOLI , Andre ESTERHUIZEN and Praveen CHATURVEDI 3
3
1 Tenova SpA, ITALY, Tenova Pyromet, SOUTH AFRICA and Tenova Technologies Pvt Ltd, INDIA
2

INTRODUCTION
Steel, unlike many other structural materials such as
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material that can be used, re-molten and re-used
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depending on applications. Steel is everywhere in
everybody’s life: vehicles, house appliances, buildings,
bridges, rails are only examples of the countless steel
applications. Steel is undoubtedly one of the pillars of
the transition from a linear to a circular economy. In
2019, the world produced 1,86bn tons of steel (about
ten times more than in 1950), and the World Steel
Association predicts the production to reach 2,7bn in
2050.

Fig.2: Different routes, different CO intensity for the
2
production of steel
EU context, where CO intensity of electric power
2
generation is about 290g/kWh, electric steelmaking
generates about 400-500kg of CO per ton of liquid
2
steel whereas the integral cycle (via blast furnace
and converter) remains at about 1600-1800kg per ton
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As of 2019, 72%of the steel in the world came from BF-
BOF route mostly processing iron ore, while only about
28% is producedvia the electric process,therefore 90%
of the CO generated for the production of steel came
2
from the plants based onBlast Furnace-Converter route.
Ironmaking is anyway inevitable. Many high-end
steel grades tolerate very low content (1000 ppm
Fig.1: Crude Steel production
or less) of tramp elements such as copper, which is,
Depending on sources, the steelmaking industry is unfortunately, abundant in recycled scrap (up to 4500
claimed to be responsible for about 12-15% of the total ppm in low-grade, cheaper scrap). Moreover, as the
worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.Steelmaking cycle of use and re-melt repeats, this average content of
routes are very different in this respect: in the current pollutants keeps on increasing as, for instance, copper

STEEL TECH 19