Decarbonizing the steel industry
卷首语：钢铁行业的绿色发展
Steel underpins modern society but its production generates intensive carbon dioxide emissions. For its sustainable development, the steel industry requires technology and product upgrades, driven by innovation and cooperation.
评论：碳中和引导钢铁行业改革
The steel industry in China has an important role in reducing national and global carbon emissions, demanding integrated actions and efforts across policies, industry and science to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality.
Climate change is a global issue facing all of humanity. The amount of greenhouse gases continues to soar as carbon dioxide is heavily emitted from various sectors in countries across the whole world, posing a serious threat to human health and the environment. In this context, countries across the world jointly strive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the form of a global agreement, aiming to achieve the objectives of carbon dioxide peaking and carbon neutrality, a state of net-zero carbon dioxide emissions. To comply with these targets, the socioeconomic, energy and industrial systems, as well as the consumption behaviour of individuals, would be dramatically reconstructed.
Climate change is a global issue facing all of humanity. The amount of greenhouse gases continues to soar as carbon dioxide is heavily emitted from various sectors in countries across the whole world, posing a serious threat to human health and the environment. In this context, countries across the world jointly strive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the form of a global agreement, aiming to achieve the objectives of carbon dioxide peaking and carbon neutrality, a state of net-zero carbon dioxide emissions. To comply with these targets, the socioeconomic, energy and industrial systems, as well as the consumption behaviour of individuals, would be dramatically reconstructed.
Recognized as a fundamental sector that provides indispensable raw materials, and with the production output continuing to increase (Fig. 1a), the steel industry has become one of the main battlefields to combat carbon emissions. In 2019, the carbon dioxide emissions of the global steel industry reached 3.64 billion tons, accounting for ~10% of the total global emissions. China is the world’s largest steel producer and consumer, with carbon emissions from its steel sector accounting for >50% of the global steel industry total (Fig. 1b) and >15% of domestic carbon emissions. This highlights the imperative significance of steel industry decarbonization in China, which should be facilitated through technological upgrading in steel production and industrial structure optimization supported by efficient policy implementation.
... ...
Low-carbon steelmaking technological routes based on BF–BOF and EAF processes.
采访：创新筑建绿色
Gang Qian from CITIC Pacific Special Steel, one of the major steelmakers in China, talks to Nature Materials about their experience and perspective on moving towards decarbonization.
研究论文：低氧稀土钢
The variation in the properties of rare earth (RE) steels is shown to stem from the presence of oxygen-based inclusions, and only under very-low-oxygen conditions can RE elements perform a vital role in purifying, modifying and micro-alloying steels.
Rare earth (RE) addition to steels to produce RE steels has been widely applied when aiming to improve steel properties. However, RE steels have exhibited extremely variable mechanical performances, which has become a bottleneck in the past few decades for their production, utilization and related study. Here in this work, we discovered that the property variation of RE steels stems from the presence of oxygen-based inclusions. We proposed a dual low-oxygen technology, and keeping low levels of oxygen content in steel melts and particularly in the raw RE materials, which have long been ignored, to achieve impressively stable and favourable RE effects. The fatigue life is greatly improved by only parts-per-million-level RE addition, with a 40-fold improvement for the tension–compression fatigue life and a 40% enhancement of the rolling contact fatigue life. We find that RE appears to act by lowering the carbon diffusion rate and by retarding ferrite nucleation at the austenite grain boundaries. Our study reveals that only under very low-oxygen conditions can RE perform a vital role in purifying, modifying and micro-alloying steels, to improve the performance of RE steels.
研究论文：基于电解精炼的熔铁直接脱碳方法
Application of electromotive force between molten iron–carbon and slag is shown to decarburize iron. Electrorefining decarburizes by direct interfacial electrochemical reaction, resulting in low solubilized oxygen in iron, even at low carbon concentration.
长按扫描二维码，关注Nature Materials公众号