Life cycle assessment of blast furnace ironmaking processes: A comparison of fossil fuels and biomass hydrochar applications

Abstract

The impact of the iron and steel production process on the ecological environment cannot be ignored. This study aims to assess the impact of life cycle assessment on the traditional fossil fuel blast furnace ironmaking process and the biomass hydrochar blast furnace ironmaking process. The Simapro v9.0 software is used to comprehensively evaluate the life cycle impacts of biomass hydrochar in the blast furnace ironmaking process. The results show that the life cycle impact categories of the blast furnace ironmaking process mainly include global warming, non-renewable energy and respiratory inorganics. The global warming impact of the ironmaking process using hydrochar is 2054.00 kg CO2 eq, which is 420.61 kg CO2 eq less than that of traditional blast furnace ironmaking process. The global warming impact is mainly reflected in the emission of CO2 gas, and the main source is the generation of blast furnace gas and the use of sinter. The respiratory inorganics impact is mainly manifested in the emission of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and particulates, which mainly comes from the mining of iron ore and the production of sinter. The non-renewable energy impact mainly comes from the coal resources, and the use of other renewable energy such as biomass energy is an important way to reduce the impact. Therefore, biomass hydrochar used in the metallurgical process is more suitable for sustainable development of the ecological environment.