Carbon Impact Mitigation of the Iron Ore Direct Reduction Process through Computer-Aided Optimization and Design Changes

Abstract

The steel industry is known to have one of the highest environmental impacts on the industrial sector, especially in terms of CO2 emissions. The so-called direct reduction route, which makes use of reformed natural gas along with top gas recycling to reduce iron oxide pellets with H2 and CO, is responsible for lower CO2 emissions than the classic blast furnace route and is currently under development. The present article focuses on the direct reduction process and discusses means to further decrease the CO2 emission rate. A set of 10 operating parameters were simultaneously changed according to computer-aided optimization. The results provide about 15% improvement over original emissions for comparable output values.