Oxygen blast furnace with CO2 capture and storage at an integrated steel mill – Part II: Economic feasibility in comparison with conventional blast furnace highlighting sensitivities

Abstract

This article is part II of the series of two papers regarding the application of oxygen blast furnace (OBF) in Ruukki Metals Ltd.’s existing steel mill, located in city of Raahe, Finland. The economic assessment presented in this paper is based on the technical modelling presented in part I of the study. OBF with CCS would lead to large reductions in CO2 emissions but also OBF without CCS would decrease emissions significantly due to decreased coke consumption. From economic point of view, other important consequences of OBF process are increased LPG or LNG (liquefied petroleum gas or liquefied natural gas) consumption, decreased electricity production (increased purchase from markets), required investments and CO2 transportation and storage costs. As CCS processes typically, especially application of OBF is a trade-off between decreased electricity production and decreased emissions. Therefore a correlation between CO2 price development and electricity price development is of interest. In this paper, several sensitivity analyses are presented with different prices for CO2, electricity and other parameters. The results present the sensitivity of different options in terms of economic feasibility for large CO2 reductions in the integrated steel mill based on blast furnace process.