Turning CO/CO2-containing industrial process gas into valuable building blocks for the polyurethane industry

Provided is a concept of how the carbon content of CO/CO2-containing blast furnace gas (BFG) from steel production could be utilized in a sequence of selective chemical conversion steps to produce high value intermediates for the polymer industry.

Dynamic Analysis of Blast Furnace Sensor Data using Cross-recurrence Quantification Strategies

This paper investigates impact degree of blast furnace related elements towards blast furnace gas (BFG) production. BFG is a by-product in the steel industry, which is one of the enterprise’s most essential energy resources. While because multiple factors affect BFG production it has characteristics of large fluctuations. Most works focus on finding a satisfactory method or improving the accuracy of existing methods to predict BFG production. There are no special studies on the factors that affect the production of BFG. Finding the elements that affect BFG production is benefit to production of BFG, which has a significance in economy. We propose a novel framework, combining cross recurrence plot (CRP) and cross recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA). Moreover, it supplies a general method to convert time series of BFG related data into high-dimensional space. This is the first analytical framework that attempts to reveal the inherent dynamic similarities of blast furnace gas-related elements. The experimental results demonstrate that this framework can realize the visualization of the time series. In addition, the results also identify the factor that has the greatest impact on blast furnace gas production by quantitative analysis.

CO2 Recycling in the Iron and Steel Industry via Power-to-Gas and Oxy-Fuel Combustion

The iron and steel industry is the largest energy-consuming sector in the world. It is responsible for emitting 4–5% of the total anthropogenic CO2. As an energy-intensive industry, it is essential that the iron and steel sector accomplishes important carbon emission reduction. Carbon capture is one of the most promising alternatives to achieve this aim. Moreover, if carbon utilization via power-to-gas is integrated with carbon capture, there could be a significant increase in the interest of this alternative in the iron and steel sector. This paper presents several simulations to integrate oxy-fuel processes and power-to-gas in a steel plant, and compares gas productions (coke oven gas, blast furnace gas, and blast oxygen furnace gas), energy requirements, and carbon reduction with a base case in order to obtain the technical feasibility of the proposals. Two different power-to-gas technology implementations were selected, together with the oxy blast furnace and the top gas recycling technologies. These integrations are based on three strategies: (i) converting the blast furnace (BF) process into an oxy-fuel process, (ii) recirculating blast furnace gas (BFG) back to the BF itself, and (iii) using a methanation process to generate CH4 and also introduce it to the BF. Applying these improvements to the steel industry, we achieved reductions in CO2 emissions of up to 8%, and reductions in coal fuel consumption of 12.8%. On the basis of the results, we are able to conclude that the energy required to achieve the above emission savings could be as low as 4.9 MJ/kg CO2 for the second implementation. These values highlight the importance of carrying out future research in the implementation of carbon capture and power-to-gas in the industrial sector.

A technical-economic analysis of turbine inlet air cooling for a heavy duty gas turbine operating with blast-furnace gas

The study was developed inside an integrated steel mill, located in Rio de Janeiro city, aiming to analyse the technical-economic feasibility of installing a new inlet air refrigeration system for the gas turbines. The technologies applied for such purpose are named Turbine Inlet Air Cooling (TIAC) technologies. The power plant utilizes High Fogging and Evaporative Cooling methods for reducing the compressor’s inlet air temperature, however, the ambient climate condition hampers the turbine’s power output when considering its design operation values. Hence, this study was proposed to analyse the installation of an additional cooling system. The abovementioned power plant has two heavy-duty gas turbines and one steam turbine, connected in a combined cycle configuration. The cycle nominal power generation capacity is 450 MW with each of the gas turbines responsible for 90 MW. The gas turbines operate with steelwork gases, mainly blast furnace gas (BFG), and natural gas. The plant has its own weather station, which provided significant and precise data regarding the local climate conditions over the year of 2017. An in-house computer model was created to simulate the gas turbine power generation and fuel consumption considering both cases: with the proposed TIAC system and without it, allowing the evaluation of the power output increase due to the new refrigeration system. The results point out for improvements of 4.22% on the power output, corresponding to the electricity demand of approximately 32960 Brazilian homes per month or yearly earnings of 3.92 million USD.