Steel Institute VDEh (Düsseldorf, Germany):
Dahlmann P., Dr. Eng., Extcutive Member of the Managing Board
Lüngen H. B., Dr. Eng., Senior Manager Operation Unit Technology, e-mail: hans-bodo.luengen@vdeh.de

In the EU the share of oxygen steelmaking remains dominant. Therefore the blast furnace will remain the dominant pre-product supplier especially for high-grade steel production. The costs for hot metal mainly determine the economic result of an integrated iron and steelworks working with the BF/BOF route. Decrease in reducing agent consumption for hot metal production in blast furnaces, increased proportion of electric steel production and process innovations, introduction of new thin slab casting lines and direct strip production processes that conserve resources, and constant optimization of processes regarding energy input (through the recovery of energy and improved coupling energy management) have led to the succeed in efficiency improvements in steel production. Huge efforts are currently undertaken to reduce CO₂ emissions with the ULCOS programme, as the conventional plants are already operated at the plant minimum of CO₂ emissions. The European Commission requires from the industry in total a decrease of absolute CO₂ emissions of more than 80% by 2050 compared to 1990. A joint study of BCG and Steel Institute VDEh ordered by Eurofer demonstrated that this target is not reachable for the steel sector even in the case of 100% applying CCUS (CO₂ Capture Usage or Storage). But the study also highlighted that innovative steel materials can be a mitigation enabler in other industries by its application. The outstanding characteristic of steel is its 100% recyclability to new steel products without quality losses. A multi pre-recycling study showed that the real greenhouse gas emission potential for steel is below 1 t CO₂/t hot rolled steel by using a multiple recycling approach when assessing the two main steelmaking routes, the blast furnace/converter and the electric arc furnace route. This demonstrates that the consideration of recycling processes and the total material pool is of utmost importance to get the real CO₂ emission figure for steelmaking and steel usage.

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