ArcelorMittal, Sekisui Chemical in alliance on carbon recycling
Luxembourg-based steel and mining company, ArcelorMittal and Japanese plastics manufacturer, Sekisui Chemical are partnering on a project to capture and re-use carbon waste gases from the steelmaking process. The aim, they said, is to reduce dependence on fossil resources and contribute to the decarbonisation of steelmaking.
CO2, which would otherwise have been emitted, will be separated and recovered from carbon-rich waste gas from the steelmaking process. An innovative chemical process developed by Sekisui Chemical in Japan converts the waste CO2 into carbon monoxide-rich Synthesis Gas (carbon monoxide and hydrogen). The Synthesis Gas is then returned to the steelmaking process as an alternative reduction agent for iron ore, thereby lowering the volume of fossil resources required in the steelmaking process.
To date, producing carbon monoxide from CO2 in large volumes has been challenging, according to the partners. Sekisui Chemical aims to demonstrate the ability to scale up its new technology through this partnership with ArcelorMittal.
ArcelorMittal is pioneering two breakthrough carbon-neutral technology pathways, Smart Carbon and Innovative-DRI. Within its Smart Carbon pathway, ArcelorMittal is already developing and deploying other carbon capture and re-use technologies including Carbalyst, a EUR165 million project in Ghent, Belgium, which converts carbon-rich steelmaking waste gases into bio-ethanol, and IGAR, an industrial-scale pilot project in Dunkirk, France, to capture waste CO2 and waste hydrogen from the steelmaking process and convert it into synthetic gas to replace the use of fossil fuel in steelmaking.
The partners’ technology, meanwhile, will initially be trialled over a three-year period at one of ArcelorMittal’s research and development laboratories located in Asturias, Spain, commencing in the third quarter of 2021. The investment cost of the project is US$ 1.9 million.
