Circular economy aspects related to steel production

The iron and steel industry is the world‘s biggest manufacturing energy consumptive industry. The steel produc- tion of China is the largest. It is followed by the corresponding industries of Japan and U.S. Turkey, with its 34.7 million tonnes has a share of 2.1 % of the total world production in 2016. The European Community has declared its targets aiming to protect the environment and to improve its quality, to serve the protection of the human health and to guarantee a cautious and efficient use of the natural resources. In this framework, the steel companies are becoming increasingly aware about the sustainability challenges in view of such requirements satisfaction and their competitiveness increase through an adequate resources and energy management. Steel production is in fact characterized by an energy intensive activity since the largest part of the production process takes place at high temperatures. Besides, the iron ore is converted to metallic iron by using carbon as a reducing agent. This in turn leads to CO2 emissions and hence to global warming. That is why the steel production is considered one of today’s main environmental problems. Its environmental impact is mainly focused on energy use decresae. The latter is usually achieved by important process measures, reduction of material losses in the course of the different produc- tion steps (also by looking at the use of steel slag as an opportunity to save natural resources) as well as of good housekeeping practices.