Japan's MHIENG to help decarbonise steel industry
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering (MHIENG), a unit of Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), will trial its carbon capture technology at steel major ArcelorMittal’s plants in Europe and North America, MHI said on October 27.
ArcelorMittal, MHIENG, BHP and Mitsubishi Development will collaborate on this multi-year trial following the signing of a funding agreement between the parties. The companies will also conduct a feasibility and design study to support progress to full scale deployment, MHI said.
The agreement, which involves a trial at ArcelorMittal’s steel plant in Gent, Belgium and another site in North America, brings together the expertise of the various partners in identifying ways to enhance carbon capture and utilisation and/or storage (CCUS) technologies in the hard-to-abate steelmaking industry.
According to MHI, there are no full scale operational CCUS facilities in blast furnace steelmaking operations at present, with only a limited number of small-capacity carbon capture or utilisation pilots underway or in the planning phases globally. However, later this year ArcelorMittal Gent will commission its Steelanol project, a scale demonstration plant that will capture carbon-rich process gases from the blast furnace and convert them into ethanol.
To further understand how carbon capture technology can be incorporated into existing steel plants, ArcelorMittal is facilitating the trial at its 5mn metric tons/year steel plant in Gent and at another location in North America, with MHIENG supplying its proprietary technology and supporting the engineering studies.
BHP and Mitsubishi Development, as suppliers of steelmaking raw materials to ArcelorMittal’s European operations, will fund the trial that is anticipated to run for multiple years. In Gent, the trial will have two phases. The first phase involves separating and capturing the CO2 top gas from the blast furnace at a rate of around 300kg of CO2/day. The second phase involves testing the separating and capture of CO2 from the offgases in the hot strip mill reheating furnace, which burns a mixture of industrial gases including coke gas, blast furnace gases and natural gas.
The parties plan to install the mobile test unit in one of ArcelorMittal’s North American direct reduced iron (DRI) plants, to test MHIENG’s technology in this steelmaking route.
MHIENG has been developing its proprietary KM CDR process for CO2 capture in collaboration with Kansai Electric Power since 1990 and, as of October 2022, it has delivered 14 plants globally and two more are currently under construction.