Co-control of Local Air Pollutants and CO₂ in the Chinese Iron and Steel Industry

Abstract

The present study proposes an integrated multipollutant cocontrol strategy framework in the context of the Chinese iron and steel industry. The unit cost of pollutant reduction (UCPR) was used to examine the cost-effectiveness of each emission reduction measure. The marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves for SO2, NOx, PM2.5, and CO2 were drawn based on the UCPR and the abatement potential. Air pollutant equivalence (APeq) captures the nature of the damage value-weights of various air pollutants and acts as uniformization multiple air pollutants index. Single pollutant abatement routes designed in accordance with the corresponding reduction targets revealed that the cocontrol strategy has promising potential. Moreover, with the same reduction cost limitations as the single pollutant abatement routes, the multipollutant cocontrol routes are able to obtain more desirable pollution reduction and health benefits. Co-control strategy generally shows cost-effective advantage over single-pollutant abatement strategy. The results are robust to changing parameters according to sensitivity analysis. Co-control strategy would be an important step to achieve energy/carbon intensity targets and pollution control targets in China. Though cocontrol strategy has got some traction in policy debates, there are barriers to integrate it into policy making in the near future in China.

A sustainability assessment system for Chinese iron and steel firms

“…Coal consumption was 575 million tons, accounting for over 14% of national coal consumption. The corresponding SO 2 and CO 2 emissions were nearly 1.8 million and over 1.2 million tons, which accounted for over 10% and 16% of national SO 2 and CO 2 emissions, respectively (Mao et al, 2013). Even though energy efficiency in the Chinese IS industry has improved greatly in recent years, the energy consumption per ton of steel is still 15e20% higher than the international benchmark (Wang et al, 2007;Zhang et al, 2012).…”

Multi-objective analysis of the co-mitigation of CO2 and PM2.5 pollution by China's iron and steel industry

“…where SO ଶ represents the SO 2 intensity, η ୗ మ represents the removal efficiency of the desulfurization technology, and EFSE ୧ represents the emission factor of SO 2 emitted from the electricity required to produce one ton of finished steel product using technology path i. In this study , η ୗ మ is set to 0.95 (Mao et al, 2013).…”

“…Additionally, researchers have used different energy models to predict the CO 2 emissions from the iron and steel industry (Chen et al, 2014;Li, L. et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2007;Wen et al, 2014;Xu and Lin, 2016). Research on the co-control of air pollutants and CO 2 indicates that co-control measures are more cost-effective than single reduction measures (Liu et al, 2014;Mao et al, 2013;. The co-benefit of reducing CO 2 and air pollutants has been studied by Dong (2015) and Kanada (2013).…”

Combined Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing in the Eco-Care-Matrix: A case study on the performance of a modernized manufacturing system for glass containers

“…Various approaches have been developed in the different sectors; for instance in transportation (Dobranskyte-Niskota et al, 2007), the automotive industry (Moah and Kanaroglou, 2009) is in need of sustainable electrical cars concepts (Strømman et al, 2012);. In the power generation sector, the increase of renewable power generation technologies calls for improvements in regard to resource utilization (Stoppato, 2006), while sustainability in the manufacturing sector is challenged (Namibar, 2010) especially by energy consumption as a major cause of environmental impacts and contributions to climate change, and thus is sought to be reduced, as for instance in the pulp and paper industry (Farla et al, 1997), the steel and iron industry (Mao et al, 2013), mining (Sarapulov et al, 2015) or maching and processing of materials (Hülsemeyer et al, 2015).…”