The Altair Enlighten Awards are the automotive industry’s only awards dedicated to automotive lightweighting and sustainability. Presented in association with the Centre for Automotive Research they recognise initiatives that reduce carbon footprint, mitigate water and energy consumption and leverage material reuse and recycling efforts. The winners were announced at a ceremony held in Traverse, Michigan, USA.
The award win recognises ArcelorMittal’s efforts to decarbonise its steelmaking and mining processes and its innovative use of biofuels.
At its steel plant in Ghent, Belgium, ArcelorMittal has recently completed construction of an industrial scale demonstration plant that converts waste wood into sustainable bioenergy through a process called torrefaction. At the Ghent plant, a reactor will produce 40,000 tonnes of biocoal annually that can be used in the blast furnace as a substitute for fossil coal. Construction of the €55 million ‘Torero’ project started in 2018 and production is anticipated to start imminently. The ‘Torero’ project works alongside ArcelorMittal’s flagship carbon capture and reuse project, ‘Steelanol’. The €200 million ‘Steelanol’ project captures carbon-rich waste gases from the blast furnace and biologically converts then into advanced ethanol, which can then be used as a feedstock for a variety of chemical products. It was recently inaugurated and in June this year took a step towards reaching full operation when it produced its first ethanol samples.
Meanwhile, ArcelorMittal Mining Canada’s plant in Port-Cartier, Canada, is the first pellet plant in the world to use pyrolytic oil on an ongoing basis. Replacing part of the heavy fuel oil consumed in the plant with pyrolytic oil is the first step of ArcelorMittal Mining Canada’s energy transition, which plans for further greenhouse gas (‘GHG’) reductions from bunker fuel substitution with bioenergy and other green technologies. The potential reductions are expected to represent a reduction of approximately 200,000 tonnes of GHG emissions when all bunker fuel is removed from the process.
Commenting, Pinakin Chaubal, Chief Technology Officer, ArcelorMittal, said: “It’s a great honour to be recognised by the Altair Awards for the efforts we are undertaking to decarbonise. As the world’s leading steel company, we are aware of the responsibility we have to lead our industry’s efforts to combat climate change and are therefore committed to developing an industry-leading suite of decarbonisation technologies. The bio-energy projects for which we have been recognised today are part of a much wider portfolio of technologies under development, including green hydrogen, carbon capture and re-use or storage and direct electrolysis technologies. We believe all will be needed if our industry is to reach net zero, which is why we intend to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to test, implement and scale the tech that can make that a reality.”
ArcelorMittal is targeting a 25 per cent reduction in the carbon intensity of the steel it produces by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050.
