Iron and Steel CCS Study (Techno-Economics Integrated Steel Mill)

Publication Overview

• The primary goal of this project is to establish a methodology to evaluate the cost of steel production when deploying CO₂ capture technology in an integrated steel mill. The objectives of this study were:
• To specify a “REFERENCE” steel mill typical to Western European configuration; and assess the techno-economic performance of the integrated steel mill without and with CO₂ capture.
• To evaluate the techno-economic performance, the breakdown of the CO₂ emissions; and estimating the CO₂ avoidance cost of the following cases: o Case 1: An integrated steel mill typical to Western Europe as the base case. o Case 2: Post-Combustion CO₂ capture using conventional MEA at two different levels of CO₂ capture rate (End of Pipe Cases or EOP) o Case 3: An Oxygen Blown Blast Furnace (OBF) with top gas recycle and the use of MDEA/Pz as solvent for CO₂ capture

Publication Summary

The global steel industry has made significant investment in reducing CO₂ emissions mostly by raising their energy efficiency. However, to achieve a reduction of the direct CO₂ emissions per tonne of steel produced from BF-BOF route by greater than 50%, CO₂ capture and storage is required. Development of breakthrough technology such as oxy-blast furnace (OBF) is currently on-going within the steel industry but will require large scale demonstration to validate engineering design and optimisation of the process. This study presented one of the several options that could be employed for a steel mill with OBF and CO₂ Capture. Deployment of post-combustion capture technology, capturing CO₂ from various sources of flue gases within the integrated steel mill is technically possible and could be readily retrofitted to an existing steel mill. However, this study has demonstrated that this option could have significant costs implications on steel production which could affect the commercial viability of the steel plants fitted with CCS. The steel industry is a globally competitive industry and hence they will be reluctant to introduce cost disadvantages like adding CCS without some global agreement on emissions reduction.