Bio-synthetic natural gas as fuel in steel industry reheating furnaces – A case study of economic performance and effects on global CO2 emissions

Maria T. Johansson

Energy, 2013, vol. 57, issue C, 699-708

Abstract: Climate change is of great concern for society today. Manufacturing industries and construction account for approximately 20% of global CO2 emissions and, consequently, it is important that this sector investigate options to reduce its CO2 emissions. One option could be to substitute fossil fuels with renewable alternatives. This paper describes a case study in which four future energy market scenarios predicting 2030 were used to analyse whether it would be profitable for a steel plant to produce bio-SNG (bio-synthetic natural gas) in a biomass gasifier and to substitute LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) with bio-SNG as fuel in reheating furnaces. The effects on global CO2 emissions were analysed from a perspective in which biomass is considered a limited resource. The results from the analysis show that investment in a biomass gasifier and fuel conversion would not be profitable in any of the scenarios. Depending on the scenario, the production cost for bio-SNG ranged between 22 and 36 EUR/GJ. Fuel substitution would reduce global CO2 emission if the marginal biomass user is a producer of transportation fuel. However, if the marginal user of biomass is a coal power plant with wood co-firing, the result would be increased global CO2 emissions.

Keywords: Biomass gasification; Steel industry; Case study; Fuel substitution; Bio-synthetic natural gas (bio-SNG); CO2 emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544213005082
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:57:y:2013:i:c:p:699-708

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2013.06.010

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().