Converting steelmaking gases to chemicals

The German steel mill Thyssenkrupp has produced ammonia from steel gases and hails this breakthrough as another milestone in the Carbon2Chem project, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

According to Thyssenkrupp, its latest news shows for the first time in the world that steel mill gases, including CO2, have been converted to ammonia, a chemical used in fertilizer production to improve food production.

Last year, Thyssenkrupp produced methanol from steelmaking gases under the Carbon2Chem project, which is coordinated by the steelmaker, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the Max Planck Society, as well as 15 other industry and research partners.

If this process is implemented commercially, Thyssenkrupp claims it could make about 20 million tonnes of annual CO2 emissions from the German steel industry commercially viable and could be used in other CO2 intensive industries.

Reinhold Achatz, Head of Technology at thyssenkrupp, commented: “Our Carbon2Chem concept has shown that it is possible to use steel mill gases to produce a variety of chemicals and thus achieve circular carbon savings. Our goal is the widespread industrial use of the technology. "

Carbon2Chem is based on the fact that steel plant gases contain valuable chemical elements, including carbon in the form of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen and hydrogen. Therefore, they are suitable for the production of carbon-containing and hydrogen-containing synthesis gas, a precursor to various chemicals. Examples include plastics and higher alcohols, as well as ammonia and methanol. In the chemical industry, synthesis gases have so far been obtained from fossil fuels such as natural gas or coal. Carbon2Chem not only converts CO2 from a steel mill, but also saves CO2 from syngas from fossil carbon sources.

The first ammonia production took place at the Carbon2Chem Technical Center in Duisburg, a pilot plant in which laboratory test results are verified under practical industrial conditions using gases produced during normal steel mill operations. According to thyssenkrupp, this work forms the basis for technology transfer on an industrial scale. The company invested € 33.8 million in the pilot plant, as well as € 8.5 million in BMBF financing for equipment and operations.


Thyssenkrupp believes that the solution developed in Duisburg can be handed over to more than 50 steel mills around the world and is in talks with stakeholders from different regions about how this technology might work�