The blast-furnace process – is there any alternative?

Global steel production is based on the refining of liquid pig iron in basic oxygen converters. No technologies that do not use liquid pig iron are expected to replace this method in the coming decades, and ore and coal will remain the main raw materials used to make pig iron. Existing technologies that produce liquid pig iron outside the blast furnace are considerably inferior to blast-furnace smelting with respect to productivity and integral total fuel consumption, which includes the fuel costs incurred to produce coke, agglomerated ore-bearing materials, hot blast air, and oxygen. The blast-furnace process is also the leading technology in terms of the scale of production and has the lowest production costs. Not only will the blast furnace retain its lead for the foreseeable future, but there may also be significant reductions in its energy costs and environmental impacts. These improvements might come about as a result of the use of “self-reducing” ore-carbon briquettes made from concentrate and inexpensive carbon-bearing materials. It might also be possible to further intensify the smelting operation through the use of oxygen and increases in top-gas pressure.