2.1. Improvements in Existing Processes
The problem of high alumina in ore can possibly be handled through appropriate modification in blast furnace design. High alumina resulting in high slag rates limits the production rates, especially because of the complex fluid dynamics in the bosh region. If the belly size is increased, the superficial gas velocity can be brought down, which can permit higher production rates.
Apart from the technologies discussed earlier (PCI, TGR-OBF), there are other methods aiming at reducing specific energy consumption and emissions such as coke dry quenching, top recovery turbine, and recycling of blast furnace slag, as well as the utilization of alternative fuels such as biomass, waste plastics, and natural gas. To implement waste heat recovery technologies such as the preheating of coal charge and coke dry quenching technology, the introduction of a waste heat recovery system is necessitated, which can bring down the requirement for fuel input in coke making from a level of 2.3 GJ/T of coal charge to 2.1 GJ/T of coal charge.
Pulverized coal injection (PCI) into blast furnaces is a common practice nowadays to improve the BF economy. For every ton of coal injected in the blast furnace, 0.85 to 0.95 tons of coke production can be avoided. To increase coal injection, one needs to adjust the parameters to achieve optimum permeability. Some ideas to achieve the same are (1) reduction of the size of coal particles—finer particles provide greater surface area and increase the rate of combustion—and (2) catalyzing the gasification reaction by treatment of coke particles with catalysts such as the slime of fine particles. Increasing the PCI is associated invariably with the pressure drop due to a decrease in coke fraction from the top. Some measures to avoid that are (1) exploring the possibilities of making coke layer thickness larger at the expense of the number of coke slits and (2) charging coarse particles of ore on the top of a coke layer
[6].
Injection of plastics after proper collection, segregation and preprocessing, biomass, and even solid injectants such as flux and BOF slag into a blast furnace can be explored for improving the blast furnace production and reducing the carbon footprint. With increasing environmental awareness and the policies of the state, these efforts are expected to gain momentum.
Oxygen blast furnace with top gas recycling technique (TGR-OBF) is another process being explored for improved energy efficiency and reduced emissions to the environment
[7]. This technique actually removes the carbon dioxide from top gas and the remaining gas, which is reducing in nature, is injected back into the blast furnace through tuyeres. Nogami et al. and Danloy et al. verified that heat demand will be sensibly reduced and productivity improved by top gas recycling
[7][8]. N.B. Ballal reviewed this technique with the 0d model and found that top gas recycling would increase the CO partial pressure of bosh gas (from 35% to 42.7% with 20% recycle and 100 kg/ton of hot metal), resulting in faster reduction kinetics
[9]. No blast furnace is running with this technique, but India can explore this possibility. In addition, dust in the blast furnace gas can be separated and can be sent back to the furnace, especially if it is low in alkali oxides. Thus, it will increase the carbon efficiency in the BF as well as reduce coke consumption.
A study on rotary kiln energy efficiency by Nishant et al.
[10] identified the possible areas where energy is lost in the form of waste gas, cooling of sponge iron, high exit temperature of clean waste gas, and intrusion of air. They suggested ways to reduce these losses by process integration principles. Ideas such as these should be promoted in the coal-based rotary kiln DRI manufacturing to make the process efficient. Otherwise, with the increase in the shift toward gas-based processes because of the plethora of advantages, rotary kiln operation would see an end in the future.
The recovery of sensible heat from metallurgical slags is a challenge. An array of energy recovery means from slags such as thermal, chemical, and thermoelectric generation technologies have been investigated. Among the technologies, thermal methods are developed the most, as it does not have complex multi-step technology as well as temperature constraints. In TATA steel (Sridhar et al.
[11]), in the pilot scale, waste heat from BOF slag was utilized for splitting water molecules to harvest hydrogen (H
2) that is cleaner and available at low cost. Using 15 kg of slag, they were able to get gas that contains as much as 23% hydrogen. The main challenges reported were safe handling of the large quantity of slag.
In 2020, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) summarized the energy-efficiency potential in the Indian steel industry
[12]. By modernizing equipment and processes and adopting best available technologies (BAT), energy consumption can be reduced by 25–30% from the current level. The potentials in different process stages in the BF-BOF route are shown in
Figure 3.
Due to the high phosphorus in Indian iron ore, high P in BF hot metal is inevitable. At the same time, the demand for low and ultra-low P% in high-quality steels is growing, which sets an extreme challenge to the converter operation. Dephosphorization can be done as pre-treatment of hot metal in torpedo ladle or at the basic oxygen furnace itself, depending on the phosphorous percentage in hot metal. Typically, lime or lime with fluorspar used as flux and Fe oxide with or without O
2 is used as an oxygen source for dephosphorization. It can be divided as low oxygen activity with a high basicity process or high oxygen activity with low basicity based on the slag composition. Liu et al.
[13] found that the most favorable temperature for P removal is around 1300–1400 °C. The dephosphorization reaction is a slag–steel interface-controlled reaction. The distribution coefficient between slag and iron is temperature dependent, getting lower at high temperatures. On the other hand, a very low temperature under 1300 °C makes slag viscous and causes poor reaction kinetics. CO
2 injection has been applied in controlling the bath temperature instead of sending oxygen alone. In addition, it also reacts with bath elements, generating additional CO gas and thus intensifying the stirring effect. When 15% CO
2 was mixed in O
2 blown through the top lance in a 300 ton converter, the dephosphorization rate increased from 56 to 63%
[12]. As a drawback, the cooling effect of CO
2 injection results in a notable reduction in scrap-melting capacity
. This idea of CO
2 injection could be explored in Indian steel industries, as it helps both improve the quality of steel and the environmental point of view, provided that the required CO
2 for injection is captured through CCS technology, which is explained in a later.
In the electric furnace route, although utilizing gas-based DRI is beneficial to the industry, the increased carbon and phosphorous contents limit the usage of it. Double slag practice can be envisaged for the induction furnace route to have better control over the phosphorus.
2.2. New Technologies/Processes
The regular supply of natural gas to gas-based processes such as Midrex is a real concern. Therefore, some plants are going for the in-plant generation of synthesis gas from coal. Syngas or synthesis gas is a product of the gasification of carbon-containing fuel having a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. Some plants using the COREX route produce hot metal as well as additional gas, which can be used for gas-based reduction, e.g., via a Midrex reactor
[14]. The mixing of coke oven gas with synthesis gas for reduction is also practiced by some manufacturers, and efforts are being undertaken to build coal gasifiers to produce synthesis gas. These technologies can more or less reduce CO
2 emissions compared to the current industrial practices, but they are not able to compensate for the emissions due to the planned strong growth of the steel production in India.
Recently, the use of hydrogen in ironmaking to replace coal or natural gas has received growing attention. In the first step, instead of pure hydrogen, the usage of different blends of gases, from natural gas to syngases, is necessitated. There are three major gas-based processes available in the world—namely, Midrex, HYL, and Circored. The Midrex process already has been operated with a level of 55 to 75% hydrogen concentration.
The implementation of hydrogen in the steel industry will be strongly dependent on the decarbonization of the power sector. Depending on the production process and utilization of energy source, hydrogen generation can be called green, blue, gray, or pink. Green hydrogen comes from splitting water by electrolysis, gray hydrogen is when natural gas is split into hydrogen and CO2 through various processes. Blue hydrogen is the same as gray except the CO2 is captured through CCUS technologies. Pink hydrogen is the same as green except it uses nuclear energy for splitting water. Since India possesses a significant capability in the generation of renewable energy sources through both solar and wind, the electrolysis process can be utilized for the production of green hydrogen. However, the process is electrically as well as water-intensive and requires high capital cost. India is expanding its natural gas grid far and wide, so the opportunities for lowering industrial emission as well as hydrogen utilization would grow stronger.
ULCOS—The Ultra-Low Carbon Steel making program is a co-operative European research and development initiative that was launched in 2004 to search for the process that could in the future when fully developed establish the potential of large cuts in CO
2 emission for steel production from iron ore. Several concepts have been investigated in parallel, using modeling and laboratory approaches to examine the potential of processes in terms of CO
2 emissions, energy consumption, cost, and sustainability. HIsarna is one such process identified through the ULCOS program; it is a combination of Isarna and HIsmelt technologies to produce liquid hot metal directly from iron ore
[15]. It requires neither agglomeration of iron ore nor coke. It also has the potential to utilize the non-coking coal reserves in India. It is efficient in energy, and it has a lower carbon footprint than conventional processes. It reduces energy consumption by at least 20% and CO
2 emission by 20%
[15]. One benefit of this process is the production of a very pure stream of CO
2, which can be collected cost-effectively. A pilot plant of HIsarna was constructed by Tata Steel Ijmuiden, and in November 2018, the company announced that a large-scale HIsarna will be constructed at Tata Steel, Jamshedpur
[16]. It could be a path-breaking step for the steel industries in terms of energy consumption and environmental emissions. The capital costs of the HIsarna process are also 10–15% lower than the conventional BF-BOF route due to excluding sinter plant and coke ovens. It could also help in achieving a low phosphorus level, as it maintains a lower temperature in the bath.
Finex Technology—Considering the large amount of iron ore fines produced during mining as well as the abundance of non-coking coal (combined with limited resources of coking coal), Finex technology was considered to be one of the potential technologies for India
[17]. In 2015, POSCO was planning to install a 12 MT steel plant using Finex technology
[18]. However, because of non-technical reasons, the plan was discontinued. Considering the success of COREX technology in two plants in India, Finex technology is a viable route for the future of Indian steel sector.
Flash Ironmaking Technology (FIT) is a potential idea to utilize the huge quantity of blue dust existing in Indian mines. It is based on the reduction of fine iron ore particles to convert them directly to metallic iron with suitable reductants (such as hydrogen, natural gas, coal gas, or a combination of gases)
[19]. This technology has been developed in the University of Utah as a part of American Iron and Steel Institute’s CO
2 breakthrough program. Agglomeration techniques can be avoided in this technology, thus avoiding the usage of coke. Thus far, it has been tested only in bench-scale experiments. However, this idea can be explored in the future, as it helps in reducing energy consumption and CO
2 emission
[20].
Biomass can be used as a renewable fossil fuel to mitigate the emission of CO
2. It can be charged at the top of a blast furnace along with coke, injected through tuyeres, or blended with coke to produce bio-coke. However, it is a challenge due to lower Coke Strength after Reaction (CSR) and higher Coke Reactivity Index (CRI) as compared to metallurgical coke. Biomass fuel shall be effective in reducing fossil CO
2 emission and more effective in the mitigation of SO
x and NO
x [21]. In Brazil, there are numerous mini blast furnaces based on charcoal
[22]. Very few blast furnaces in the world tried using biomass. Stubble burning such as in Punjab and Haryana causes extreme air pollution every year. Instead, large amounts of biomass could be produced and potentially utilized by steel manufacturers. This possibility is yet to be explored for sustainable carbon footprint and its availability for the steel sector. The optimization of the biomass value chain and the efficient conversion technologies are of high importance for replacing fossil fuels in the near future.