Life cycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of iron pelletizing process in China, a case study

The iron and steel industry in China is suffering from the burden of overcapacity, structural adjustment and upgrading. In order to analyse and improve the energy efficiency, the life cycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of iron pelletizing are estimated in this work. The direct energy consumption is 793.4 MJ/t, with the largest energy demand being caused by pellets induration process. The equivalent carbon footprint for producing one ton iron pellet is 58.5 kg CO2, and 51.4% of which comes from the extraction, processing and transportation of raw materials, fuel and electricity. Compared with iron sintering, pelletizing process is more environmentally friendly with lower energy consumption and less GHG emissions. In addition, the SO2, NOx and dust emissions of pelletizing are <= 5% of sintering process. Efforts to further improve the pelletizing technologies are addressed to catch up the global technological frontier and to improve its competitiveness. This study not only provides solutions to China's iron and steel industry for energy saving and emission reduction, but also offers ways for self innovation. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.