Techno-economic assessment and comparison of CO2 capture technologies for industrial processes: preliminary results for the iron and steel sector

This paper presents the methodology and the preliminary results of a techno-economic assessment of CCS implementation on the iron and steel sector. The results show that for the short-mid term, a CO2 avoidance cost of less than 50 (sic)/tonne at a CO2 avoidance rate of around 50% are possible by converting the conventional blast furnace (BF) to Top Gas Recycling Blast Furnace (TGRBF). However, large additional power consumption for CO2 removal and oxygen generation, and reduction in BF gas export, makes the economic performance of the technology very sensitive to energy prices. Add-on CO2 capture for conventional BF may achieve similar costs (40 - 50 (sic)/tCO(2) avoided), but the CO2 avoidance rate will be only about 15% of the specific CO2 emissions. For the long term future, although there are large uncertainties, advanced CO2 capture technologies do not seem to have significant economic advantages over conventional technologies. The results also indicate that in a carbon-constrained society, when considering new plants, smelting reduction technologies such as the COREX process, may become a strong competitor to conventional blast furnace based steel making process when equipped with CO2 capture. Although conventional iron and steel making using BF is expected to dominate the market in the long term, strong need for drastic CO2 emissions reduction may drive the sector towards large scale implementation of advanced smelting reduction technologies. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.