Calculation Method of Energy Saving in Process Engineering: A Case Study of Iron and Steel Production Process

The effect of the traditional energy saving mode on process engineering is decreasing, so the idea of system energy saving is developing vigorously. This paper summarizes the existing studies on energy saving from three aspects—energy saving technology, energy management, comprehensive evaluation or analysis—and clearly finds that related studies on energy saving have been gradually promoted to promote the development of system energy saving in the whole process engineering process. Among them, the calculation of energy saving brought by energy saving technology is a difficult point in the research. This paper proposes a novel calculation method of energy saving by taking the iron and steel production process (ISPP) as an example. According to the actual data provided by a steel plant in China, the calculation method is validated effectively.

Extraction of the Rare Element Vanadium from Vanadium-Containing Materials by Chlorination Method: A Critical Review

Vanadium as a rare element has a wide range of applications in iron and steel production, vanadium flow batteries, catalysts, etc. In 2018, the world’s total vanadium output calculated in the form of metal vanadium was 91,844 t. The raw materials for the production of vanadium products mainly include vanadium-titanium magnetite, vanadium slag, stone coal, petroleum coke, fly ash, and spent catalysts, etc. Chlorinated metallurgy has a wide range of applications in the treatment of ore, slag, solid wastes, etc. Chlorinating agent plays an important role in chlorination metallurgy, which is divided into solid (NaCl, KCl, CaCl2, AlCl3, FeCl2, FeCl3, MgCl2, NH4Cl, NaClO, and NaClO3) and gas (Cl2, HCl, and CCl4). The chlorination of vanadium oxides (V2O3 and V2O5) by different chlorinating agents was investigated from the thermodynamics. Meanwhile, this paper summarizes the research progress of chlorination in the treatment of vanadium-containing materials. This paper has important reference significance for further adopting the chlorination method to treat vanadium-containing raw materials.

Life cycle impact assessment of metal production industries in Australia

Metal production industries are associated with positive economic benefits, however their activities are significantly resource and energy intensive, contributing to emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases to the environment. The balance between the economic inputs and environmental footprint of the metal production industries determines their contribution to sustainability. This work provides environmental impact assessment of the production of aluminium, copper, gold, iron and steel, lead, nickel and zinc, and considers their contribution to the economy. The emissions of selected representative industries in Australia were sourced from public national emission inventories and used as input parameters in the openLCA software. ReCiPe midpoint and endpoint hierarchist impact assessment methods were used to investigate the environmental impacts of the selected industries. The results indicate that lead, followed by aluminium and nickel production had the largest environmental impacts. The work further revealed the specific emissions for better control for each industry taking into consideration their relative environmental and economic impacts. For instance, adoption of renewable energy sources would significantly decrease the greenhouse gas emissions and the associated environmental impacts of the copper, zinc, gold, and iron and steel production industries. Improvement of sustainability of the production of lead would require further control of trace metal emissions, while for aluminium and nickel production, improved control of emissions of particles and the acidic gases SO2 and NOx.