A Brief Overview of Low CO2 Emission Technologies for Iron & Steel Making

The global steel production has been growing for the last 50 years, from 200 million metric tons in 1950s to 1,240 million metric tons in 2006. Iron and steelmaking industry is one of the most energy-intensive industries, with an annual energy consumption of about 24 EJ, 5% of the world's total energy consumption. The steel industry accounts for 3-4% of total world greenhouse gas emissions. While enhancing energy efficiency could be a short-term approach for the steel industry to reduce greenhouse gas emission, the long-term approaches to achieve a significant reduction in CO2 emissions from the steel industry would be through (1) developing and applying CO2 breakthrough technologies for iron and steelmaking, and (2) increasing use of renewable energy (in particular, bio-energy) for iron and steelmaking. This paper presents an overview of new CO2 breakthrough technologies for iron and steelmaking, and the current research and development for the use of biomass and bio-fuels as substitutes for coke, coal and natural gas in various iron and steelmaking processes including iron-ore sintering, blast furnace operations, and new iron and steelmaking processes. The key challenges for utilization of bio-energy on a large scale for iron and steelmaking are also discussed in this paper.