A model on CO2 emission reduction in integrated steelmaking by optimization methods.

The iron and steel industry is a large energy user in the manufacturing sector. Carbon dioxide from the steel industry accounts for about 5–7% of the total anthropogenic CO₂ emission. Concerns about energy consumption and climate change have been growing on the sustainability agenda of the steel industry. The CO₂ emission will be heavily influenced with increasing steel production in the world. It is of great interest to evaluate and decrease the specific CO₂ emission and to find out feasible solutions for its reduction. In this work, a process integration method focusing on the integrated steel plant system has been applied. In this paper, an optimization model, which can be used to evaluate CO₂ emission for the integrated steel plant system, is presented. Two application cases of analysing CO₂ emission reduction possibilities are included in the paper. Furthermore, the possibility to apply the model for a specific integrated steel plant has been discussed. The research work on the optimization of energy and CO₂ emission has shown that it is possible to create a combined optimization tool that is powerful to assess the system performance from several aspects for the steel plant. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]