Volume 2: Innovative Solutions for Energy Transitions: Part I

Process Simulation of Blast Furnace Operation With Biomass Syngas Injection for Clean Production Ruiqi Wang, Long Jiang , Yaodong Wang, Anthony Paul Roskilly

Abstract

The modern steel industry depends largely on blast furnace route to produce hot metal. Massive amount of CO2 is discharged in the blast furnace process through utilising carbon-based reducing agents e.g. coke to extract iron from iron ore. It is extensively acknowledged that renewable and biomass-generated reducing agents are gathering momentum to replace part of coke in ironmaking applications. Syngas produced from biomass gasification is mainly composed of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. In this paper, the model of blast furnace operation with biomass syngas injection is established by using Aspen Plus software. The simulation results demonstrate that the minimal coke consumption with syngas injection could be 320 kg·tHM-1 when an injection rate is about 60 kg·tHM-1 , while the coke consumption could be reduced to 316.5 kg·tHM-1 when 50 kg·tHM-1 of hydrogen is injected. With the optimal syngas injection rate, CO2 emissions of the blast furnace can be reduced by 40.8% when compared with that of typical operation when coke rate is 385 kg·tHM-1 .

Keywords blast furnace, biomass, syngas, hydrogen, process simulation