• ArcelorMittal starts CO2 recycling trials at Gent steel plant

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      ifrfadmin
  • In the June 3 edition of Combustion Industry News, we reported on a pilot carbon capture unit starting operations on the blast furnace off-gas at the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Gent, Belgium.

    In a new trial which expands the multi-year carbon capture pilot taking place at the Gent site, ArcelorMittal and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) are now partnering with climate tech company D-CRBN to test technology that converts CO2 into carbon monoxide using plasma.

    In a press release issued on July 8 2024, ArcelorMittal stated that this is the first industrial testing of D-CRBN’s plasma technology, making ArcelorMittal Gent the first steel plant in the world to trial the process, which has been designed to reduce CO2 emissions.

    The company says the carbon monoxide can be used as a reductant in the steelmaking process – replacing part of the coke or metallurgical coal used in the blast furnace – or as a basic ingredient in Gent’s Steelanol plant, for chemicals or alternative fuel production.

    The source of the high purity carbon dioxide required by the D-CRBN process is MHI’s carbon capture unit. As described in the previous CIN article, this unit is currently being used to capture blast furnace off-gases, and off-gases from the hot strip mill reheating furnace, in Gent.

    A pipeline between MHI’s carbon capture unit and D-CRBN’s unit was connected on 1 July to test the feasibility of using the CO2 captured by the MHI technology as a feedstock for D-CRBN. The industrial pilot will make sure any impurities that accompany the CO2 produced during steelmaking do not have a detrimental effect on the process and product gas.

    MHI Senior Vice President (CCUS) of GX (Green Transformation) Solutions, Tatsuto Nagayasu says carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) technologies “will play a critical role in decarbonising existing assets in the steel industry”. He describes the collaboration with ArcelorMittal and D-CRBN in Belgium as “another tool for the industry to reduce its carbon footprint — capturing emissions, converting them into a valuable feedstock, and feeding them back into the process.”

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