Review of green and low-carbon ironmaking technology

The steel industry accounts for 5% of the world's total energy consumption and contributes 6% of the world's anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The control of CO2 emissions has become increasingly stringent in various countries. The most advanced CO2 emission reduction technology in the steel industry has reached a bottleneck; therefore, many countries have begun developing breakthrough CO2 emission reduction technologies to cope with the current global climate change. Blast furnace (BF) ironmaking is the key production process in steel manufacturing. The development of low-carbon ironmaking technology based on the BF is an effective way to realize green evolvement of iron and steel industry. The current hot technologies of low-carbon BF ironmaking and innovative low-carbon BF ironmaking processes of the steel industry in various countries (including Europe, USA, Japan, etc.) are summarized in this paper; in addition, new ideas for China's steel industry to reduce CO2 emissions are provided.