Improving The Resource Efficiency of The German Steel Industry Using Material Flow Analysis

This article deals with the utilization of residues from the German steel industry with focus on electric arc furnace (EAF) dust. Material flow analysis is used to illustrate the steel industry by specific output flows of residues over the process chain. The objective of the underlying study was to find further, more efficient connections between process chains. In Germany EAF dust is mainly processed in the Waelz process to recover the contained zinc (open-loop recycling). About 67 % of the world's EAF dust, however, is landfilled and thereby an amount corresponding to 1 to 10 % of the annual production of zinc is lost for production processes. In this article treatment operations for EAF dust are compared through utility analysis with regard to resource efficiency.