Assessing traditional iron and steelmaking processes from an
environmental point of view and developing breakthrough
eco-efficient processes for the future are major challenges for
the steel industry today. In the framework of the challenging
European project ULCOS, which stands for Ultra Low CO2
Steelmaking, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was chosen to
assess breakthrough processes that could be part of the
future iron and steel making landscape and to compare
them to the reference classical integrated steelmill.
To carry out such a study we propose a new methodological
concept which combines LCA thinking with physicochemical
process modelling.
Physicochemical models were developed for each processes
of the classical integrated steelmaking route in order to
generate the data required to draw the Life Cycle Inventory
of the route. Such a method bypasses the traditional
data collection and brings accuracy to the inventory by
introducing rigorous mass and energy balances into the
methodology.
In addition it was shown that such an approach allows
testing and assessing different operational practices of
the processes in order to optimise the use of energy and
the CO2 emissions, which showed that it can be used as a
powerful tool for eco-conception of processes.