POSCO engineers will launch a venture firm producing liquefied carbonic acid gas from byproduct CO2 generated at steel mills, to help the steelmaker better cope with rising emission allowance prices and enjoy additional profits, the venture firm’s head said Thursday.<\/p>\n
“Steel mills are bound to emit CO2 because they are based on coal power, and the conventional impression people have of that it is a pollutant creating greenhouse gas,” said Kim Sang-hyun, POSCO Finex R&D team leader and the head of the venture firm, named CarbonEn.<\/p>\n
“When we collect the byproduct CO2 and produce liquefied carbonic acid gas, it can be commercialized for fuel for welding, dry ice, food additives and even medical supplies.”<\/p>\n
According to him, not only POSCO but many other companies in Korea will face stronger regulations on carbon emission, under which steelmakers are required to cut their CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2030.<\/p>\n
“Regardless of their commitment to cut emissions, steelmakers are facing difficulties in finding the right solution, while the emission allowance prices are soaring,” he said.<\/p>\n
According to the Korea Exchange, carbon emission allowance was traded at 33,900 won per ton on Wednesday, up 330 percent from 7,860 won in January 2015, when the emission trading bourse opened in Korea.<\/p>\n
Kim said the idea of making liquefied carbonic acid gas from byproduct CO2 is not brand new, but only a small number of plants or steel mills can apply the technology for commercial purposes, because of the CO2 concentration in byproduct gases.<\/p>\n
“Most of the byproduct gas generated from plants and mills has low CO2 concentration, thus the cost of making liquefied carbonic acid goes up,” Kim said. “However, POSCO Finex mills use pure oxygen in the steelmaking process, which generates byproduct gas with a high CO2 concentration and lowers the cost of producing liquefied carbonic acid.”<\/p>\n
Finex is a POSCO technology allowing the direct use of cheap iron ore fines and non-coking coal as feedstock, resulting in significantly lower operating costs and nitrogen emissions than a blast furnace.<\/p>\n
After CarbonEn is registered as a company in 2021, the company will take 360 tons of CO2 from POSCO Finex mills every day and process it into liquefied carbonic acid. The volume is as much as the domestic liquefied carbon acid market is currently short of and accounts for 10 percent of POSCO’s total daily CO2 emissions.<\/p>\n
Kim said CarbonEn plans to raise 20 billion won ($17.15 million) from multiple investors, including POSCO, by 2021 and log sales of 20 billion won in 2022. POSCO will invest into CarbonEn, but will not acquire equity in the company, in order to allow CarbonEn to be more independent, he said.<\/p>\n
Including CarbonEn, 12 teams comprised of POSCO employees seeking to set up startups were selected for the steelmaker’s venture firm incubating program which started on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
For the teams, POSCO will offer financial and other support for one year, as well as guaranteeing team members who leave their POSCO job for the startups can return to the company within three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
POSCO engineers will launch a venture firm producing liquefied carbonic acid gas from byproduct CO2 generated at steel mills, to help the steelmaker better cope with rising emission allowance prices and enjoy additional profits, the venture firm’s head said Thursday. “Steel mills are bound to emit CO2 because they are based on coal power, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,5571],"tags":[10744,10743],"supplier":[3822],"class_list":["post-68334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","category-co2-based","tag-carboncapture","tag-useco2","supplier-posco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68334"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=68334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}