China's Shougang Jingtang and Rio Tinto Commission 10,000-Tonne-Scale Blast Furnace Gas Carbon Capture Unit

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 28, Rio Tinto disclosed that an industrial-scale blast furnace gas carbon dioxide capture pilot unit, jointly built with Shougang Group, has been put into operation at the Shougang Jingtang steel production base. The unit is connected to the ironmaking production system at the Jingtang base, can process up to 3,000 cubic meters of blast furnace gas per hour, and has a designed maximum annual carbon dioxide capture capacity of approximately 10,000 tonnes. Shougang previously disclosed that the project was officially commissioned on September 15, that the system is currently operating stably, with a carbon dioxide removal rate exceeding 95%, and that all decarbonization indicators have met design standards.

The project adopts a high-efficiency carbon capture chemical absorbent and supporting process flow independently developed by Shougang, and treats blast furnace gas generated during the ironmaking process. The project was initiated in November 2024, construction began in July 2025 in the No. 3 blast furnace area of Shougang Jingtang, and thereafter unit construction, system connection, and operational commissioning were completed. After commissioning, the unit will be used for long-term industrial testing and technical research, and optimization of the capture system's operation will continue.

This 10,000-tonne-scale unit is the latest milestone in the phased scale-up of carbon capture technology by Shougang and Rio Tinto. The two parties had previously built a small-scale pilot facility capable of processing 100 cubic meters of blast furnace gas per hour, which was put into operation in October 2024; the processing scale was subsequently expanded to 3,000 cubic meters per hour. Rio Tinto previously disclosed that between 2023 and 2025 it had committed USD 3.5 million to support Shougang's research and development and industrial testing of carbon capture and utilization technology, and to provide support for the technical development of large-scale units.

Shougang and Rio Tinto signed a memorandum of understanding on steel low-carbon technology cooperation in September 2022, covering low-carbon sintering, optimization of blast furnace and converter processes, recovery of waste heat from blast furnace slag, utilization of converter slag, and carbon capture and utilization. Among these, the carbon capture project is being advanced along the path of small-scale testing, industrial-scale unit construction, and long-term operational research. Rio Tinto's 2025 climate disclosure document shows that this unit, which processes 3,000 cubic meters of blast furnace gas per hour, has completed construction and was included in the 2026 commissioning plan.

After the unit is commissioned, the two parties will continue to study pathways for resource utilization of captured carbon dioxide, including converting carbon dioxide into syngas and feeding it back into the steel production process. Waste heat generated in existing production processes has also been included in research on the operation of the capture system, with the aim of reducing energy consumption and operating costs in the carbon capture process.