Climate Change

Biography

Biography: Santanu Sarkar

Abstract

Steel sector accounts for 17% of the world’s industrial energy consumption and more than 2% CO2 emission across the globe(Figure 1). Average energy intensity in BF-BOF route is 18.68 GJ,which is 20% of the total cost of steel productionand average CO2 Intensity is 1.77 t CO2 per ton of crude steel production. It has been reported that in between year of 2010 to 2014 the steel production has increased by 16% and consequently CO2 emission also amplified.  It has also been quantified 1621 Mt crude steel has been producedin2015and by 2050,it is projected that use of steel will increase by 1.5 times that ofpresent utilization. Thus, steel sectors should move toward renewable energy.
Renewable energy is getting attention in recent years due to environmental pollution caused by utilization of fossil fuel. Moreover, price of fossil fuel is increasing as its natural storage is rapidly decreasing. Steel industries have taken several initiatives for resource allocation of alternative energy and CO2 capture and sequestration. Recently, specific energy consumption and emission has reduced remarkably due to waste heat utilization, scrap based steel production, use of LED based illuminating system, and incorporation of Direct-reduced iron (DRI) and EAF method. Alternative fuels can be generated from steel by-product gases as well as solid wastes and now a day’s utilization of solar energy is also very encouraging. On the other hand several projects are ongoing for reduction CO2 emission such as Ultra-Low Carbon dioxide Steelmaking (ULCOS), adsorbent based CO2 capture, COURSE 50, etc.
Steel sector is very keen to adopt renewable energy based system as well as to develop technologies for CCS. Consequently, there are several successful pilot scale studieshave been completed which are at door step for commercialization.However, several of these methods require huge development before commercialization.