[ Sustainability ]
[ Sustainability ]
CO 2 emissions associated with stainless steels – facts and reflections
Like any other major industry , the stainless steels industry consistently works to reduce its production CO 2 emissions . Industry direct and indirect emissions have , due to solid industry improvement efforts , progressively reduced over the last decade . However , in order to assess the overall emissions picture when using stainless steels and other materials , it is imperative to also determine the emissions throughout a product ’ s life , i . e .; from ‘ cradle to grave ’. Only through this approach can a valid materials comparison be made .
By worldstainless
As a starting point and in order to understand emissions associated with the production of stainless steels , it should be noted that within the stainless steels industry there are essentially two active production systems , namely :
• The scrap-based production system in which the bulk of used raw materials are end-of-life stainless steels and / or similar alloy materials that are recycled to produce new stainless steels . This production system is aligned to geographical locations where the availability of end-of-life materials and scrap is high .
• The Nickel Pig Iron ( NPI ) production system in which the bulk of the Nickel units required for stainless steel production is not derived from stainless steel scrap , but from extracted Nickel ores which are then converted into NPI .
This production system is primarily but not exclusively aligned to geographical locations where the availability of stainless steel scrap is currently low . There is currently insufficient ‘ available-to-use ’ end-of-life stainless steel scrap in all regions of the world to permit only a scrap-based production to exist . This situation is likely to remain for the foreseeable future .
Figure 1 : Life cycle of stainless steel for the year 2019 . Source : KIT and Team Stainless 2022
36 Stainless Steel World December 2024 www . stainless-steel-world . net