India’s Steel Ministry is looking at the use of bamboo and other biomass sources as low carbon emitting alternatives in steel-making. Policy decisions could be worked on, if required, Secretary Nagendra Nath Sinha said on Thursday.

Biomass sources typically include wood and wood processing wastes; agricultural crops and waste materials; biogenic materials in municipal solid waste; animal manure and human sewage; landfill gas and biofuels made from biogenic alcohol.

Sinha said biomass can be considered as a low carbon-emission resource, thereby making it an attractive option to reduce emissions from iron and steel production.

The International Energy Agency in a research paper noted that “bioenergy can be carbon neutral because the carbon that is released during combustion has previously been sequestered from the atmosphere and will be sequestered again as the plants regrow, i.e. if sustainably produced”.

“This is one of the decarbonisation levers (use of biochar) that we said (the Centre) we should work on….there is a lot of availability of biomass; and there could be, for example, use of bamboo (as a source). But, this requires a lot of work in terms of policies like characterisation of biomass and so on,” Sinha told businessline on the sidelines of the Indian Steel Markets Conference.

“We have take up this…..and hopefully something (will materialise),” he added.

India’s emission intensity in the steel sector is around 2.55 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel produced. Company wise break-up shows SAIL to have an intensity of 2.5, Tata Steel at 2.12, JSPL at 2.59 and JSW at 2.49.

Experiments in India

Blast furnaces would need to substitute for a proportion of the coal used. Biochar — black carbon produced from biomass sources — can potentially be substituted for pulverised coal currently injected directly into blast furnaces, said a Steel Ministry official.

According to World Steel Association report, such a project was carried out with the ‘Australian CO2 breakthrough programme’ that focussed on substituting coal used in pulverised coal injection (PCI) in the blast furnace with sustainable biochar.

Incidentally, Ministry officials refer to an Indian experiment where a Chennai-based company that reached out to senior officials apprised them of using bio-coal in PCI of the blast furnace and rotary kiln DRI in the Chattisgarh plant of one of the largest private steel companies. The steel company reportedly was planning to have a bio-coal demo plant with indigenous technology.

Application of bio-coal in rotary DRI is “far less complicated” than in BF-PCI. Part of the coal will be replaced with bio coal in feeding to the DRI. The existing DRI units can use bio coal without any modifications.

In order to establish a suitable supply chain, Sinha suggested the use of bamboo as a potential biomass feedstock.