Technological, ecological and economic assessment of the coke based blast furnace operation with charcoal injection

Currently the utilization of charcoal for hot metal production is almost limited to small size Blast Furnaces in Brazil. Because of the potential CO2 mitigation with the use of charcoal, the interest of this renewable energy source is increasing among metallurgists. In this sense the injection of small particles of charcoal, also called Bio-PCI, may assist to significantly reduce the carbon footprint in coke based blast furnaces. This contribution presents a study on the technological, ecological and economic assessment of the coke based blast furnace operation with charcoal injection. The process of BF No. 5 at POSCO has been simulated using the blast furnace simulation tool of SteelUniversity. Injection rates of 180 Kg/t HM were used as auxiliary fuel to assess its impact over the main process parameters. Findings show that the charcoal injection would help to reduce in 34.7% the CO2 emission from the process, additionally the slag production may be reduced from 182.83 to 167.76 kg/ t HM, while sulfur would remain steady. From the economical viewpoint the production cost of hot metal may have been increased in 2.55%, due to the utilization of charcoal instead of mineral coal.