Summary

The steel reheating furnace is the most energy consuming process in the rolling mill. Usually fossil fuels with the high heating value, such as coke oven gas (COG), natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or oil, are used for combustion processes to achieve the target slab temperature. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibility of using blast furnace gas (BFG) with a low calorific value in the reheating furnace by means of fuel preheating and oxyfuel techniques. This work compares various oxyfuel combustion alternatives, and their influence on the energy balance for the reheating furnace. In addition, a system analysis was performed to investigate the potential influence of these oxyfuel combustion alternatives on the energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at an integrated steel plant. The economic evaluation is also discussed to some extent.