Steel Plant Exhaust Gases Used to Create Fuel and Specialty Chemicals
AACHEN, Germany – Carbon monoxide-rich exhaust gases from steel plants are only being reclaimed to a minor extent as power or heat. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute have developed a new recycling process for this materially unused carbon resource. They have successfully produced fuel and specialty chemicals from these exhaust gases on a laboratory scale.
The exhaust gas masses that arise from steel manufacturing plants are very large. Fraunhofer has developed a process by which these exhaust fumes can be reclaimed and recycled into fuels and specialty chemicals. With the aid of genetically modified bacterial strains, the research team ferments the gas into alcohols and acetone, converts both substances catalytically into a kind of intermediary diesel product, and from this produces kerosene and special chemicals.