Through carbon resource recycling, China Steel Corporation (CSC) not only enables steel plants to reduce carbon emissions, but also helps the petrochemical industry reduce its dependence on petrochemical raw materials, forming a new cooperation model for carbon reduction and creating mutual benefit for the two major industries of steel and petrochemicals.
CSC is an integrated steel mill that produces by-product gas during the smelting process. The gas is rich in CO and CO2, and direct emissions will exacerbate the greenhouse effect. To this end, CSC has initiated a three-phase collaborative production plan with the petrochemical industry and the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).
Co-production of steel and petrochemicals pilot plant
CSC utilizes pipelines to introduce by-product gas from converter steelmaking and the blast furnace into the pilot plant, and uses pressure swing adsorption technology to capture CO and CO2. This process enables CO purity to reach more than 98.5%. Through the purification technology developed by ITRI, CO2 can be concentrated to 99%, which can be directly provided to downstream chemical plants for producing chemicals. At the same time, through nickel, copper, zinc and other alloys as catalysts and hydrogen, CO and CO2 are converted into methanol, methane, acetic acid and other chemicals at appropriate temperatures. These chemicals can be further processed and used by petrochemical plants to make EVA resin, a major materials used in furniture, textiles, insoles, solar packaging and other fields.
Benefits
- In the first phase, the “Pilot Plant” achieves an annual carbon reduction of 4,900 metric tons.
- In the second phase, a “Demo Plant” will be established before 2030, with a target carbon reduction of 240,000 metric tons per year.
- In the third phase, CSC will coordinate the planning of a new materials recycling park and expand the scale of carbon reduction.