Low-Carbon Manufacturing and Optimization Strategies of Iron and Steel Industry Based on Industrial Metabolism

Energy saving and emissions reduction in the iron and steel industry is a significant challenge to achieve carbon neutrality and sustainable development. Many studies focus on the optimization of materials, energy and carbon emissions but lack of optimization strategies in the iron and steel industry. A comprehensive and effective system model is still needed to optimize the CO2 emissions to face the production planning of a company in the future. This article applies industrial metabolism to develop a practical optimization model for improving materials consumption and energy consumption in coking, sintering, pelleting, ironmaking and steelmaking, and the minimum carbon emission is set as the optimization objective. The results show that carbon emissions reduce 148.65 kg/ton crude steel compared with the original data with a yield of 8.4 Mt crude steel. In addition, the optimum material and energy consumption of each production unit under different production plans is studied. If breakthrough technologies are not applied to long-route processes, improving scrap steel ratio is the most promising approach for low-carbon manufacturing in the iron and steel industry in the future.