Luxembourg-headquarter global steel giant ArcelorMittal has announced that its subsidiary ArcelorMittal Belgium has started operating a pilot carbon capture unit at its Ghent steel plant in partnership with Australian miner BHP Billiton, Japan-based Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering (MHIENG) and Australia-based Mitsubishi Development.
The unit will operate for one to two years to test the feasibility of progress to full-scale deployment of the technology. According to the statement, the trial will have two phases. The first phase involves separating and capturing the carbon from the top gas from the blast furnace, while the second phase involves testing the separating and capturing of carbon in the off-gases in the hot strip mill reheating furnace, which burns a mixture of industrial gases including coke gas, blast furnace gases and natural gas.
In October 2022, the four companies signed a collaboration agreement on a multi-year trial of MHIENG’s carbon capture technology, as SteelOrbis previously reported.