A comparative study on environmentally friendly ironmaking process through air to oxygen

Modern integrated steel mills that use coal-based ironmaking processes face the significant challenge of reducing greenhouse gases and pollutants such as CO 2 , SOx, and NOx. This article investigates using oxygen in steelmaking to improve process efficiency and drastically reduce carbon emissions. Compared to the conventional ironmaking process that uses hot air, the ironmaking process using oxygen can further reduce overall carbon consumption. Additionally, this process captures and utilises emitted carbon dioxide, making it a low-carbon ironmaking process until a fossil fuel-free ironmaking process is developed. The FINEX ® process, while smaller than conventional Blast Furnace (BF) ironmaking in terms of commercial production scale, plays a critical role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by using oxygen instead of air. Although the oxygen blast furnace is currently under development. FINEX ® employs preheated hot compacted iron (13.7%) and dust burners (19.8%) to address the upper heat deficiency issue encountered with high levels of oxygen enrichment in blast furnaces. Furthermore, designing and implementing optimised Tuyeres to facilitate the injection of pulverised coal injection and natural gas can enhance the performance and operation of oxygen blast furnaces in the future. Using oxygen has the advantage of being able to respond to the environment better than air using conventional ironmaking processes and can quickly switch to a hydrogen-reduced process. Similar to the development of the basic oxygen furnace (BOF) process, which converted cheap air into oxygen to increase productivity and cleanliness of the steel in the steelmaking process, the alternative bridge technology to the realisation of complete carbon neutrality will be an oxygen-based ironmaking process. After all, in the current decarbonisation environment, oxygen should be viewed not as a luxury or cost burden, but as an essential requirement.