Bio-carbon for metallurgical industry

Research overview >

Bio-carbon production for the application in metal, iron, and steel production processes

This work aims at developing a very detailed knolwedge required to design efficient pyrolysis processes for biocarbon production. The main target of biocarbon application is dominantly metallurgical industry such as iron, steel and metal (Si, Al, Mn) producers. 

Currently, most metallurgical processes consume large amount of fossil coal. One of the reasons why we use coal in metallurgical industry is "reduction", which is the process to remove oxygen atom from ore, MxOy (for example, Fe2O3, SiO2). In reality, most of such reactions happen via either H2 or CO as:

MxOy + yCO => xM + yCO2 or MxOy + yH2 => xM + yH2O.

One most recent development in metallurgical industry is the use of H2 from renewable electricity and replace the use of coal all together.

However, we still need certain amount of solid carbon sources in various metallurgical processes, which comes from carbon-neutral, fossil-free sources. To achieve that goal, we are developing a process to produce coal-like material, biocarbon, from sustainably-sourced biomass like by-product from forest industry.

Several PhD students have been carrying out laboratory scale experiments to assess various process alternatives, and participating in the experiments in a pilot and demonstration scale pyrolysis plant. 

We are thriving to find the optimal procedures and conditions for pyrolysis process to produce as much biocarbon as possible at various qualities, based on requirements in each utilization options (such as the chemical composition, reactivity, mechanical strength, density, and pore structure).

Biggest challenges

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Some results

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