Miscanthus to Biocarbon for Canadian Iron and Steel Industries: An Innovative Approach

Iron-based industries are one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Partial substitution fossil carbon with renewable biocarbon (biomass) into blast furnace (BF) process can be a sustainable approach mitigating GHG emissions from ironmaking process. However, barriers using biomass for this purpose inherent high alkaline and phosphorous contents in ash, resulting fouling, slagging, scaling on BF surface. Furthermore, content is considerably lower than coal. To address these barriers, research proposed an innovative combining two thermochemical conversion methods, namely hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) slow pyrolysis, converting suitable Miscanthus, which most abundant herbaceous sources, was first treated by HTC obtain lowest possible ash mainly due reduction alkali matter contents, then subjected pyrolysis increase content. Design expert 11 used plan number required experiments find optimal condition steps. It found that obtained at 199 °C 28 min consecutively pyrolyzed 400 30 showed similar properties pulverized coal injection (PCI) currently BFs its low (0.19%) (79.67%).