Research Progress on Low-Carbon Ironmaking Technologies for China’s Iron and Steel Industry Under the Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality Goals

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a clear classification and comparative metrics (CO2 mitigation, TRL, cost) for low-carbon ironmaking technologies, useful for benchmarking progress.

🏢実務担当者:Offers a roadmap of technology options with cost and readiness levels, helping steel companies plan investment in decarbonization pathways.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the dependency on green hydrogen and clean electricity, informing policy support for infrastructure and R&D in the steel sector.

Under China’s “carbon peaking before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060” targets, the low-carbon transformation of the ironmaking stage—which contributes approximately 70% of the CO2 emitted per ton of steel in the dominant blast furnace–basic oxygen furnace (BF–BOF) route—is decisive for decarbonizing the steel industry. In contrast to earlier reviews that describe individual technologies in isolation, this review provides a structured, cross-technology synthesis: the main routes are classified into short-/medium-term low-carbon blast furnace technologies (hydrogen-rich carbon-recycling oxygen blast furnace, hydrogen-rich injection, biomass char injection and ultimate energy-efficiency measures) and medium-/long-term non-blast furnace technologies (hydrogen-based shaft furnace direct reduction, smelting reduction, rotary hearth furnace, fluidized-bed reduction and electric smelting reduction) and are then compared on a common set of quantitative indicators—CO2 mitigation, specific energy and hydrogen demand, technology readiness level (TRL) and relative cost. On this basis, emerging hydrogen-based flash ironmaking, developed from the interdisciplinary integration of “iron and steel–non-ferrous metallurgy–hydrogen metallurgy–plasma”, is critically assessed, with a clear separation between laboratory/pilot feasibility and industrial readiness. We conclude that low-carbon blast furnace technologies, owing to low retrofit cost and high maturity, will dominate near-term mitigation, whereas hydrogen-based shaft furnaces and, in the longer term, hydrogen-based flash ironmaking define the pathway toward near-zero-carbon ironmaking—conditional on the availability of green hydrogen and low-carbon electricity and on overcoming key engineering barriers.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.3390/ma19153163first seen 2026-07-26 05:12:51