Challenges and Outlines of Steelmaking toward the Year 2030 and Beyond—Indian Perspective

Abstract

In FY-20, India’s steel production was 109 MT, and it is the second-largest steel producer on the planet, after China. India’s per capita consumption of steel was around 75 kg, which has risen from 59 kg in FY-14. Despite the increase in consumption, it is much lower than the average global consumption of 230 kg. The per capita consumption of steel is one of the strongest indicators of economic development across the nation. Thus, India has an ambitious plan of increasing steel production to around 250 MT and per capita consumption to around 160 kg by the year 2030. Steel manufacturers in India can be classified based on production routes as (a) oxygen route (BF/BOF route) and (b) electric route (electric arc furnace and induction furnace). One of the major issues for manufacturers of both routes is the availability of raw materials such as iron ore, direct reduced iron (DRI), and scrap. To achieve the level of 250 MT, steel manufacturers have to focus on improving the current process and product scenario as well as on research and development activities. The challenge to stop global warming has forced the global steel industry to strongly cut its CO2 emissions. In the case of India, this target will be extremely difficult by ruling in the production duplication planned by the year 2030. This work focuses on the recent developments of various processes and challenges associated with them. Possibilities and opportunities for improving the current processes such as top gas recycling, increasing pulverized coal injection, and hydrogenation as well as the implementation of new processes such as HIsarna and other CO2-lean iron production technologies are discussed. In addition, the eventual transition to hydrogen ironmaking and “green” electricity in smelting are considered. By fast-acting improvements in current facilities and brave investments in new carbon-lean technologies, the CO2 emissions of the Indian steel industry can peak and turn downward toward carbon-neutral production.

Challenges and Prospects of Steelmaking towards the Year 2050

“…The next two papers highlight the situation in the two biggest steel-producing countries [2,3]. China is the overwhelming producer nearing one billion tons per year.…”

“…Notwithstanding, the Chinese steel industry is facing big problems in trying to peak the emissions, cutting them down in accordance with the national policy and carbon neutrality targets [2]. Similar problems affect India which has risen to second place among steel-producing countries [3]. Its production structure is, however, totally different.…”

Multi-Mode Model Predictive Control Approach for Steel Billets Reheating Furnaces

“…The cost function reported in Equation ( 9) and the hard/soft constraints reported in Equation ( 10) represent an MPC formulation with tracking, move suppression, and slack variables terms [54,55]. In Equations ( 9) and (10), u ∈ R l u x1 represent the MVs vector, while y ∈ R m y x1 represents the CVs vector, which refers to the last two groups of CVs of Table 6. Furthermore, the slack variable vectors ε y (k), ε T (k), ε ∆T (k) and ε A (k) can be characterized by different elements, based on the case study.…”

“…Data selection, acquisition, storage, and analysis play a fundamental role in this context: the Industry 4.0 framework can provide useful and efficient methods for these purposes [6][7][8]. Through hardware interventions, some aspects of the production chain are modified; an example is constituted by the installation of a huge number of "micro-mills" with induction furnaces [9,10]. An additional hardware modification solution is represented by process improvement through heat-mass transfer and thermal efficiency calculation [11].…”

Molecular dynamics studies of hematite surfaces with PAM, HPAM and metasilicate

“…Medium and low-grade ores are being mined as the high-grade reserves are about to finish to meet the increasing demand for iron ore [2]. During the beneficiation of these medium and low-grade iron ore, fines were generated from the comminution and classification stages which contain a good amount of iron values [3][4][5][6]. Recoveries of these iron values are so substantial to maximize the cost economics.…”