Enhancing the production of liquid hydrocarbons by coupling blast furnace gas (BFG) of steelwork with syngas in the GTL process

Abstract

Steelwork is one of the main emitters of CO2 in the world. For this reason, many efforts are being made to reduce or avoid CO2 emissions by unit optimization or by carbon capture and storage (CCS) or utilization (CCU) processes. In the steelwork, three main off-gases are generated including the Blast Furnace Gas (BFG), the Coke-Oven Gas (COG), and the Basic Oxygen Furnace Gas (BOFG). Different processes and technologies can be proposed for recovery based on the volume and composition of the steelwork off-gases. In this paper, the BFG stream is utilized to improve the efficiency of the GTL process and reduce CO2 emissions. For this purpose, a part of the BFG gases is mixed with the syngas produced in the methane autothermal reforming process and injected into the Fischer-Tropsch reactor to produce liquid hydrocarbons. The BFG flow rate was determined according to the optimum H2/CO value. The pressure and volume of the reactor were set at 10 bar and 300 m3 for optimal hydrocarbon production. The simulation results showed that mixing a portion of the BFG with the syngas increases the C5 + production by 11268 bbl/day, while the CO2 emissions decreased by 146529 ton/yr.