ArcelorMittal and partners Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI), BHP, along with Mitsubishi Development Pty Ltd (Mitsubishi Development) started operating a pilot carbon capture unit on the blast furnace off-gas at ArcelorMittal Gent in Belgium.
The pilot carbon capture unit will operate for one to two years at Gent, to test the feasibility of progress to full-scale deployment of the technology, which would be able to capture a sizeable portion of the Gent site emissions, if successful. Engineers have been working on site since January to assemble and commission the unit.
In October 2022, the four parties announced their collaboration on a multi-year trial of MHI’s carbon capture technology (Advanced KM CDR ProcessTM) at multiple carbon dioxide (CO2) emission points, starting at the Gent steelmaking site. The pilot carbon capture unit will be testing initially with blast furnace off-gases, and off-gases from the hot strip mill reheating furnace and has the potential to be trialled to capture other important steelmaking gases such as reformer flue gas from a Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) plant.
As per the press release, the development of the carbon capture solution at Gent could feed into multiple CO2 transport and storage projects under development in the North Sea region and contribute to global technological solutions required for decarbonisation of steel production.
The EU has an objective to achieve an annual CO2 storage capacity of 50 million tons by 2030, proposed under the Net-Zero Industry Act. Moreover, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates CCUS technology needs to apply to more than 37 per cent of primary steel production by 2050, equivalent to 399 Mtpa of CO2, for the Net Zero Emissions scenario.
