The deployment of CCS in the energy intensive industries like steel manufacture has been a major talking point since the publication of the first IEA CCS Roadmap. The iron and steel industry is one of the largest industrial sources of CO2. Globally, it accounts for about 6% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions (approx. 1.2 Gt CO2/year). Currently, two main processes dominate global steel production:

• the integrated steel mill in which steel is made by reducing iron ore in a blast furnace and subsequent processing in a primary steelmaking plant (BF-BOF Route); and
• the mini-mill in which steel is made by melting scrap steel or scrap substitutes in an electric arc furnace (EAF Route).

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.

The steel industry through the ULCOS project in Europe is researching a new technological development for iron and steel manufacture. One such technology is the oxy-blast furnace (OBF) which is close to the point of being ready for demonstration. Large scale demonstration is necessary to validate the engineering design and help optimisation of the process.

IEAGHG has now completed a detailed technical and economic analysis of one option for integrating CCS into an integrated steel mill with the next generation an oxy blast furnace technology. The option considered involves the capture of CO2 from the top gas of the oxy-fired blast furnace using MDEA/Pz solvent. This comprehensive analysis is the first publicly available study providing plant level bottom up cost analysis and it is hoped that the framework developed as part of this study can also be used to assess other CCS integration options in the future.

One of the key outcomes of the study is that the deployment of oxy-blast furnace with CO2 capture provides an option where CO2 is centrally captured from the most carbon intensive process of the steel mill. This option could potentially reduce the cost of CO2 capture and could benefit from hjosir coking coal price.

On the other hand, 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.