The modern technology of iron and steel production and possible ways of their development

Abstract

In the changing global market scenario for raw materials for the steel industry, a number of novel ironand steelmaking process technologies are being developed to provide the steel companies with economically-sustainable alternatives for ironand steel-making. In addition, the steel industry is also focusing on reduction of energy consumption as well as green-house gas (GHG) emissions to address the crucial subject of climate change. Climate change is presenting new risks to the highly energyand carbon-intensive, iron and steel industry. The industry needs to focus on reduction of energy consumption as GHG emissions to address climate change. Development of alternate ironand steelmaking process technologies can provide steel companies with economically-sustainable alternatives for steel production. For managing climate change risks, novel modeling tools have been developed by Hatch to quantify and qualify potential energy savings and CO2 abatement within the iron and steel industry. The tool developed for abatement of greenhouse gas carbon is called G-CAPTM (Green-House Gas Carbon Abatement Process) while that developed for improving energy efficiency is called En-MAPTM (Energy Management Action Planning). Evaluation of existing operations have shown that most integrated plants have GHG and energy abatement opportunities; on the other hand, the best-in-class plants may not have a lot of low-risk abatement opportunities left, even at high CO2 price. In this context, it is important to assess these critical issues for the alternate ironand steelmaking technologies that have been developed. This paper presents a comparative evaluation of energy-efficiency and GHG emissions for some selected ironand steelmaking technologies that are being considered for implementation. In this work, Hatch’s G-CAP™ and En-MAP™ tools that were developed with the main objective of quantifying and qualifying the potential energy savings and CO2 abatement within the iron and steel industry, were employed in the evaluation conducted. © 2015, Allerton Press, Inc.