Siderurgia sustentável : uma análise ampliada dos desafios do carvão vegetal como estratégia para mitigação de emissões de dióxido de carbono

Abstract

The Brazilian steel industry has always been prominent in the economic sphere and has great notability in the world ranking of steel producers. The steel industry is responsible for a significant portion of global emissions of greenhouse gases and, despite the emissions of the Brazilian steel sector being lower than those of developed countries, the Country voluntarily joined the global efforts to combat climate change. In December 2009, Federal Law No. 12,187 was enacted, which instituted the National Policy on Climate Change in Brazil, aimed at consolidating a low­carbon economy. Federal Decree No. 9,578, of November 22, 2018, regulated the aforementioned Law and consolidated the normative acts that provide for the National Fund on Climate Change and the National Policy on Climate Change and instituted, in its Article 17, the Sectorial Plan for the Reduction of Steel Industry Emissions. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the contribution of charcoal steel in the mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions, one of the main villains of global warming. For this purpose, CO2 balances were drawn up for charcoal­fired steel mills, based on the CO2 fixation coefficient of the pig iron production cycle and the average annual production of the sector in Minas Gerais. The methodology used, based on the method proposed by the IPCC to estimate CO2 emissions from pig iron production, through the blast furnace (IPCC, 2019) and on an exploratory study of a qualitative nature outlined by bibliographic research based on technical reports and data from government agencies, technical publications, scientific articles, theses and dissertations by specialists in the area of the steel industry and sustainability in the steel industry. The results of this work confirmed that the use of charcoal as a thermo­reducer by the steel industry contributes to the mitigation of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is an important strategy for a low carbon economy, as long as it does not generate more environmental damage and which are currently some of the biggest challenges in the sector.