PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Upgrading iron and steel plants could save equivalent of two years of global carbon emissions

Upgrading, or retrofitting, the world's iron and steel processing plants early could reduce carbon emissions by up to 70 gigatonnes by 2050, roughly equivalent to two years' net global carbon emissions, according to a new study led by UCL researchers

2023-09-20
(Press-News.org) Upgrading, or retrofitting, the world's iron and steel processing plants early could reduce carbon emissions by up to 70 gigatonnes by 2050, roughly equivalent to two years' worth of net global carbon emissions, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.

Published in the journal Nature, the researchers found that by upgrading the world’s iron and steel production facilities, carbon emissions can be reduced by 58.7 gigatonnes between 2020 and 2050, roughly equivalent to two years’ worth of net global carbon emissions. In addition, they found that by bumping forward emissions reduction retrofits five years ahead of when they would be typically scheduled, it would reduce emissions by 69.6 gigatonnes over that time frame. Iron and steel production contributes about 7% to total global carbon emissions.

To develop this schedule, the team created a comprehensive database of 19,678 individual processing units located in 4,883 individual iron and steel plants around the world, inventoried by their technical characteristics, including their locations, processing technologies, operating details, status and age.

Iron and steel production is a carbon emissions heavy process. The researchers found that as of 2019, the last year that data is available, 74.5% of the world’s steel was produced in coal powered plants that release considerable carbon emissions. Technologies exist to reduce these admissions, but upgrades are expensive and time consuming and so are usually only undertaken at the end of a processing unit’s operational lifetime.

Refining is also hard on the equipment, and the individual processing units within each plant need to be retrofitted periodically to prolong their operational lifetimes. Overall, 43.2% of global iron and steel plants have been retrofitted with new technologies or have otherwise enhanced their processes to extend their operating lifetime. The frequency of their retrofits depends on the technique they employ and how old they are, but typically they occur after 15 to 27 years of use.

The researchers found that if all currently operating processing units were upgraded to incorporate low-emissions technology at their predicted time of their refit, total emissions from the iron and steel sector could be reduced by 58.7 gigatonnes between 2020 and 2050, but if all the refits and upgrades were bumped forward and completed five years early, the total carbon savings would be 16% greater at 69.6 gigatonnes.

But the team also emphasises that mitigation efforts will have to take place at the individual facility level, and that the decarbonisation of the entire iron and steel industry depends on the efforts undertaken by every single plant. Because of the complexity and variety of methods involved in steel production around the world, there’s no one-size-fits-all decarbonisation technology or solution for the entire sector, and each processing unit should be upgraded individually according to its technical specification.

Senior author Professor Dabo Guan (UCL Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction) said: “Our results lend vivid background to the possibility of achieving net-zero carbon emissions in iron and steel production in the future. By retrofitting existing plants with low-carbon technologies, and improving scrap collecting and recycling, the iron and steel sector can dramatically reduce its carbon emissions. This study sheds light on the specific emissions reductions that are possible within the iron and steel industry.”

About 63% of the world’s steel production is from some type of blast oxygen furnace, while most of the remaining capacity is produced by electric arc furnaces. Upgrading the global inventory of blast oxygen furnaces will yield the greatest net carbon savings, about 74% of the total projected carbon savings. Upgrades to electric arc furnaces would account for the second highest net carbon savings, at about 16% of the projected whole, though this may be limited by the total amount of stock scrap available worldwide as the technique is dependent on recycling existing metals.

The researchers hope that this data can be used to identify improved ways to update ageing steel plants with emission reduction technologies in order to reach net-zero carbon emissions more quickly. Compiling this publicly available global database of iron and steel plants and tracking all their ages and technologies has significantly improved the detail of data around the carbon emission of global iron and steel production.

The researchers emphasise that because of the wide range of production methods and plant designs, the particulars of individual upgrades and mitigation effort of each processing unit will have to be done on an individual basis. Their research will help policymakers create a roadmap of when and how to upgrade iron and steel plants to meet emissions reduction targets.

The first author PhD student Tianyang Lei of Tsinghua University said: “Our study presents various CO2 emissions mitigation pathways at the plant level, optimizing when and how to retrofit each plant based on processing routes, latest retrofitting year, and operating lifetime, stressing the importance of early retrofitting with deep decarbonisation technologies for achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

The database reveals other insights into the iron and steel industry. Geographically different regions tend to use different technologies and techniques based on the available technologies and raw materials in the region. Some of the most carbon-intensive, coal-based production plants are concentrated in China, Japan, and India, while plants in the Middle East and North America which have greater access to natural gas resources use techniques that emit relatively less carbon dioxide.

The top five carbon emitting iron and steel plants contribute 7% of the total CO2 emissions from the global iron and steel industry but only make up 0.1% of the total 4,883 plants. They are: Anshan Iron & Steel (China), Posco - Pohang Iron & Steel (South Korea), Shanghai Baosteel (China), Jiangsu Shagang (China), Maanshan Iron & Steel Group (China). The researchers say that retrofitting these plants to lower their carbon emissions would demonstrate the feasibility for other, similar plants. 

The research was led by UCL and conducted in collaboration with Tsinghua University, Peking University and King's College London.

 

Notes to Editors

For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact Michael Lucibella, UCL Media Relations. T: +44 (0)75 3941 0389, E: m.lucibella@ucl.ac.uk

Tianyang Lei, Daoping Wang, Shijun Ma, Weichen Zhao, Can Cui, Jing Meng, Xiang Yu, Qiang Zhang, Shu Tao, Dabo Guan, ‘Global iron and steel plant CO2 emissions and carbon neutrality pathways’ will be published in Nature on Wednesday 20 September 2023, 16:00 UK time 11:00 US Eastern Time and is under a strict embargo until this time.

The DOI for this paper will be 10.1038/s41586-023-06486-7.

 

Additional material

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06486-7

Please contact Michael Lucibella for a copy of the research paper under embargo

 

About UCL – London’s Global University

UCL is a diverse community with the freedom to challenge and think differently.

Our community of more than 41,500 students from 150 countries and over 12,500 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.

We are consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the world and are one of only a handful of institutions rated as having the strongest academic reputation and the broadest research impact.

We have a progressive and integrated approach to our teaching and research – championing innovation, creativity and cross-disciplinary working. We teach our students how to think, not what to think, and see them as partners, collaborators and contributors.  

For almost 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.

We were the first in England to welcome women to university education and that courageous attitude and disruptive spirit is still alive today. We are UCL.

www.ucl.ac.uk| Follow @uclnews on Twitter | Watch our YouTube channel | Listen to UCL podcasts on SoundCloud | Find out what’s on at UCL Minds | #MadeAtUCL

Find out how UCL is helping lead the global fight against COVID-19 www.ucl.ac.uk/covid-19-research

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Genetically modifying individual cells in animals

Genetically modifying individual cells in animals
2023-09-20
One proven method for tracking down the genetic causes of diseases is to knock out a single gene in animals and study the consequences this has for the organism. The problem is that for many diseases, the pathology is determined by multiple genes. This makes it extremely difficult for scientists to determine the extent to which any one of the genes is involved in the disease. To do this, they would have to perform many animal experiments – one for each desired gene modification. Researchers led by Randall Platt, Professor of Biological Engineering at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel, have now developed a method that will greatly ...

County-level sociodemographic characteristics and availability of COVID-19 therapeutic drugs

2023-09-20
About The Study: The results of this study showed sociodemographic-based disparities in geographic clustering of COVID-19 therapeutic drugs, highlighting disparities in access to these drugs. With the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, these findings highlight an important gap in treatment access.  Authors: Kosuke Tamura, Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.34763) Editor’s ...

Consumption of ultraprocessed food and risk of depression

2023-09-20
About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that greater ultraprocessed food (UPF; i.e., energy-dense, palatable, and ready-to-eat items) intake, particularly artificial sweeteners and artificially sweetened beverages, is associated with increased risk of depression. Although the mechanism associating UPF to depression is unknown, recent experimental data suggests that artificial sweeteners elicit purinergic transmission in the brain, which may be involved in the etiopathogenesis of depression.  Authors: Raaj S. Mehta, ...

Surrogate adiposity markers and mortality

2023-09-20
About The Study: Waist-to-hip ratio had the strongest and most consistent association with mortality irrespective of body mass index in this study consisting of 387,000 UK adult participants from the UK Biobank. Clinical recommendations should consider focusing on adiposity distribution compared with mass.  Authors: Guillaume Pare, M.D., M.Sc., of the Vascular and Stroke Research Institute in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.34836) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

Strengthening artificial immune cells to fight cancer

2023-09-20
Among available immunotherapies, the use of «CAR-T» cells is proving extremely effective against certain blood cancers, but only in half of patients. A main reason for this is the premature dysfunction of these immune cells, which have been artificially modified in vitro. A team from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE), Lausanne (UNIL), the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) and the Vaud University Hospital (CHUV), all part of the Swiss Cancer Center Léman (SCCL), has discovered how to prolong the functionality of CAR-T cells. By inhibiting a very specific metabolic mechanism, the team has succeeded ...

Prehistoric fish fills 100 million year gap in evolution of the skull

Prehistoric fish fills 100 million year gap in evolution of the skull
2023-09-20
A 455-million-year-old fossil fish provides a new perspective on how vertebrates evolved to protect their brains, a study has found. In a paper published in Nature today (Wednesday 20th September), researchers from the University of Birmingham, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, Netherlands; and the Natural History Museum have pieced together the skull of Eriptychius americanus. The research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, suggests that the ancient jawless fish found in ancient deposits in ...

Study finds firearm injuries increased in gentrified neighborhoods

2023-09-20
Brigham researchers reported that gentrified neighborhoods had a 62 percent higher firearm injury incidence rate than non-gentrified communities with comparable sociodemographic characteristics Understanding the reason for this increase is vital to reducing future firearm injuries Gentrification can have a ripple effect on communities. While it can improve certain conditions in typically low-income areas, rising housing costs can displace residents, causing social disruption and other downstream effects. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, conducted a study using national data to examine the relationship ...

Scientists reveal how the effects of psychosis spread throughout the brain

Scientists reveal how the effects of psychosis spread throughout the brain
2023-09-20
Psychoses like schizophrenia cost billions of dollars annually and derail the lives of people struggling with the disease. Now Monash University researchers have modelled how the effects of psychosis spread through the brain, allowing them to isolate areas where these changes may originate from and which could be targeted by therapies designed to reduce the disease’s progression. The study, published today in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry, details how the scientists were able to map and model the spread of brain changes in people with different stages of psychoses such as schizophrenia,from people newly ...

Ya-Chieh Hsu, Ph.D. (Harvard) and Xuebing Wu, Ph.D. (Columbia) receive inaugural Glenn Foundation Discovery Awards

Ya-Chieh Hsu, Ph.D. (Harvard) and Xuebing Wu, Ph.D. (Columbia) receive inaugural Glenn Foundation Discovery Awards
2023-09-20
Santa Barbara, CA and New York, NY -- The Glenn Foundation for Medical Research (GFMR) and the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) are pleased to announce the inaugural recipients of the  2023 Glenn Foundation Discovery Awards: Ya-Chieh Hsu, PhD, Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University, and a Principal Faculty Member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Xuebing Wu, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medical Sciences (in Medicine and in Systems Biology), Columbia University. The Glenn Foundation Discovery Award  was created to support research projects with strong potential to develop pioneering discoveries ...

Decoding depression: Researchers identify crucial biomarker that tracks recovery from treatment-resistant depression

2023-09-20
A team of leading clinicians, engineers, and neuroscientists has made a groundbreaking discovery in the field of treatment-resistant depression. By analyzing the brain activity of patients undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS), a promising therapy involving implanted electrodes that stimulate the brain, the researchers identified a unique pattern in brain activity that reflects the recovery process in patients with treatment-resistant depression. This pattern, known as a biomarker, serves as a measurable indicator of disease recovery and represents a significant ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Engineers uncover why tiny particles form clusters in turbulent air

GLP-1RA drugs dramatically reduce death and cardiovascular risk in psoriasis patients

Psoriasis linked to increased risk of vision-threatening eye disease, study finds

Reprogramming obesity: New drug from Italian biotech aims to treat the underlying causes of obesity

Type 2 diabetes may accelerate development of multiple chronic diseases, particularly in the early stages, UK Biobank study suggests

Resistance training may improve nerve health, slow aging process, study shows

Common and inexpensive medicine halves the risk of recurrence in patients with colorectal cancer

SwRI-built instruments to monitor, provide advanced warning of space weather events

Breakthrough advances sodium-based battery design

New targeted radiation therapy shows near-complete response in rare sarcoma patients

Does physical frailty contribute to dementia?

Soccer headers and brain health: Study finds changes within folds of the brain

Decoding plants’ language of light

UNC Greensboro study finds ticks carrying Lyme disease moving into western NC

New implant restores blood pressure balance after spinal cord injury

New York City's medical specialist advantage may be an illusion, new NYU Tandon research shows

Could a local anesthetic that doesn’t impair motor function be within reach?

1 in 8 Italian cetacean strandings show evidence of fishery interactions, with bottlenose and striped dolphins most commonly affected, according to analysis across four decades of data and more than 5

In the wild, chimpanzees likely ingest the equivalent of several alcoholic drinks every day

Warming of 2°C intensifies Arctic carbon sink but weakens Alpine sink, study finds

Bronze and Iron Age cultures in the Middle East were committed to wine production

Indian adolescents are mostly starting their periods at an earlier age than 25 years ago

Temporary medical centers in Gaza known as "Medical Points" (MPs) treat an average of 117 people daily with only about 7 staff per MP

Rates of alcohol-induced deaths among the general population nearly doubled from 1999 to 2024

PLOS One study: In adolescent lab animals exposed to cocaine, High-Intensity Interval Training boosts aversion to the drug

Scientists identify four ways our bodies respond to COVID-19 vaccines

Stronger together: A new fusion protein boosts cancer immunotherapy

Hidden brain waves as triggers for post-seizure wandering

Music training can help the brain focus

Researcher develop the first hydride ion prototype battery

[Press-News.org] Upgrading iron and steel plants could save equivalent of two years of global carbon emissions
Upgrading, or retrofitting, the world's iron and steel processing plants early could reduce carbon emissions by up to 70 gigatonnes by 2050, roughly equivalent to two years' net global carbon emissions, according to a new study led by UCL researchers