Buy

Books
Click images for more details

Twitter
Support

 

Recent comments
Recent posts
Currently discussing
Links

A few sites I've stumbled across recently....

Powered by Squarespace
« A crack in the ivory tower | Main | Renewables slump on the way »
Monday
Jan182016

Carbon debrief has its pants down

With the Port Talbot steelworks layoffs in the news, I was interested to see this tweet from Carbon Brief's Simon Evans this morning.

 

 

The linked article, which seeks to divert blame away from energy costs, has this rather remarkable claim:

The share of electricity in steel production costs is around 6%, according to one estimate for blast-furnace steel production, used at most major steelworks. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says energy makes up 5.2% of costs for “basic metals”, which includes steel.

Now having worked in manufacturing industry in the dim and distant past I have a bit of feel for costs, and so the figure of 6% immediate jumped out at me as being very low. A moment's further thought brought to mind a geography lesson at about age 10, when we learned that steel was made from coke and iron ore rather than electricity.

Yet the whole of the Carbon Brief article discusses electricity costs alone.

This page has a representative set of cost figures for a steel mill, suggesting that coal (from which plants like Port Talbot manufacture coke on site) is as much as 25% of total costs. It also confirms electricity costs as 6% of the total.

I think it's fair to say that the Carbon Debrief has been caught with its pants down.

Being an inquisitive kind of chap, I asked Simon Evans to explain. His reply was as follows:

 

 

Right. I'll drop a line to Richard Warren, the EEF source, to see if he wants to comment.

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

Reader Comments (55)

Why are exemptions made for greener power
... but not for greener steel ?
As @Markx says above China greeless steel is not the same as UK greener steel.
As ever UK industry is expected to compete on a world market with one hand tied behind its back.

OK although the energy and green costs are difficult to figure out, due to coal/gas/electricity prices going up and down and green laws being forced in then exemptions being put in later..one thing is sure that a China/India plant has LOWER costs in this respect.
..BUT In effect they are not producing the same steel as the UK.
- #1 China/India - greenless steel
- #2 Germany - Greener steel - with some green costs forgiven
- #3 UK - Greener Steel - with carbon tax reductions not yet implemented

When UK Steel Plants close what the world end's up with is not a greener situation, as the replacement production comes from Greenless China/India/Russia etc ?

Of course for greener energy it is argued that the industry needs to be protected with subsidies.
...What come be done to level the playing field with steel ?
.. People would try to cheat the system, but you could add a TAX to Greenless steel imports into Europe/US.

Jan 19, 2016 at 2:39 AM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Excluding downstream processing of steels (rolling, forging, casting, etc) and specialist alloy steels the manufacture of steel is a multi stage process: a blast furnace (BF) using coke to produce iron; a basic oxygen furnace (BOF, or sometimes BOS) to reduce the C content from about 4% to sub 0.5% to make steel; electric arc furnace (EAF) which uses cold steel (usually scrap, sometimes with pig iron) and electricity. (http://www.eef.org.uk/uksteel/About-the-industry/How-steel-is-made/default.htm).

I am not an expert coster, but I know enough to know that there are many pitfalls for the unwary and we have to be careful of what others mean by costs. So for example in the link (http://www.steelonthenet.com/cost-eaf.html) for EAF steel making, electricity is 17% of total marginal costs including a capital charge. You can see direct labour is a tiny amount (3%). What is not stated are the overheads - maintenance, office functions etc which act as multipliers of the marginal cost.

Clearly electricity is a substantial cost for EAF and downstream, less so for BF and BOF which use coal etc. Following the BOF link in (http://www.steelonthenet.com/cost-eaf.html) shows electricity costs of 5.7% (tending to confirm the reported 6% figure) but the coal cost of 23.7%, almost as much as the scrap cost, indicates how critical energy costs including green impositions are.

Make no mistake green political meddling is purposefully destroying the basis of our civilisation for the mass of the population. People with no idea how things are made are in charge and appear to think we can carry on with our rich lifestyle (compared with previous ages and civilisations) based on windmills, craft candles, and taking in each others washing. Idiocy is rampant.

Jan 19, 2016 at 1:02 PM | Unregistered CommenterBudgie

Some references as per post earlier:

Factories in China produce four times as much CO2 as Western factories

http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/factories-in-china-produce-four-times-as-much-co2-as-western-factories/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150928153039.htm

China is making the world’s products, but in terms of carbon they are horribly inefficient compared to the West. Old factories and coal fired electricity mean the country is pouring out CO2 — not that that matters, but it rather puts the squeeze on anyone who thinks it’s good for the environment to shut down clean western factories and give that production to China.

.... in table 1 of the paper. Lui et al compare 15 products made in China and the EU, and found that China produces 4.4 times the emissions of CO2 in order to produce the same product.

When Chinese workers make steel, they make 2.8 times as much “pollution”. When they make cast iron, its 4.1 times as “polluting”. When they make polypropylene, they generate 18.4 times as much CO2. When a factory moves from the West to China, the Greens should spit chips.

Jan 20, 2016 at 8:35 AM | Unregistered Commentermarkx

Having spent a portion of my life working in a steel mill, here are some of my observations.

By accident, I was assigned to the 'powerhouse' crew. Perhaps the only crew that actually visit all parts of an operating steel plant. The powerhouse crew was where the machinists and engineers worked along with the laborer staff that allegedly had the potential to advance to machinists and engineers.

There are multiple accurate descriptions for portions of a steel mill, none were comprehensive.

The powerhouse where I worked operated five multistory boilers for generating electricity. The working fuel was natural gas, but one of the engineers told me that they could be refitted to burn coal or oil if necessary.
One boiler generator was always out of service undergoing rebuild. Four boilers were always in service at any time.

Most of the electricity used in the steel plant and much of the steam generated was used to heat buildings all over the plant.

The blast furnace used coke, originally coal before it entered the coking process, to generate the cast iron fueling the steel furnaces. Yes, depending on the steel being made, significant loads of recycled steel went into the furnaces.

The steel mill I worked at was built in the 1950s and they really made an effort at refusing any rationales for actually replacing the method and process for making steel with electric arc and oxygen furnaces being the new technology discussed. They were proud of their old furnaces and equipment.

The basic steel process involved blasting air and natural gas through the steel while adding the ingredients, some of which were decidedly exothermic, incredibly dangerous and incredible to watch.

A loader would literally use a massive machine to pick up an entire rail car of material, move to the open furnace door and extend the arm holding the rail car into the furnace, turn it upside down, shake it violently and retract the arm and rail car without turning the rail car upright.
Every load going into the furnace produced a spout of flame and heat. Rail car loads of limestone caused flames that leapt across the furnace load area. When the loader was retracting the rail car after a load of limestone, he moved his machine sideways as fast as he could travel the second he cleared the furnace door.

There were nine steel furnaces with one furnace out of service at all times undergoing rebuild, eight furnaces were in constant steel production.

Steel pours count amongst the most amazing sights I have ever seen. When they tapped a furnace a bucket the size of a 2 level single house was filled with liquid glowing steel. The steel was poured into giant ingot molds carried by train cars that brought the filled ingots past a long platform at ingot height.
Some of the highest paid workers in the plant worked the steel ingot platform taking steel samples, using long wooden paddles to stir the steel mixing in the additions they dumped in. I was told that those guys got big bucks because the job was very dangerous. Every now and then, an ingot would have water in the bottom and either explode or erupt. These workers wore silver suits and carried heavy plexiglas shields. Overhead watchers were studying the row of ingots and if they saw signs of moisture in the steel, they sounded an alarm; at which point the ingot workers would grab their shield and start backing toward the protective wall behind them.

Ingots were laid outside next to the rail yard to fully cool. When cool the ingot mold was removed and stored to dry for the next pour.

Ingots intended for processing by the rolling or pipe mills were taken to that part of the plant and put into large ovens to bring up to rolling or pipe making temperatures.
Taking the rolling mill as an example, the fully heat soaked ingot would be brought in by crane and dropped into the top end of the rolling machine. Starting with immense rollers graduating down just large rollers at closer distances. The ingot would hit the first rollers and seem to emerge from the other side, thinner but much faster than the ingot was traveling.
Sprayers operate constantly spraying water and oil over all roller and steel surfaces. The water and oild seems to hover and dance an inch (12.5mm) or so above the steel constantly.

Every roller that the steel hits emits thinner steel faster on the other side of the rollers. Watching the steel get rolled into steel sheets or rolls is like watching an Escher drawing in motion.

The steel mill portion practiced a process they called waste heat capture. The heat coming off the top of the furnaces was directed through a series of underground louvers to trap the heavy iron dust until the heat was then put through boilers to produce steam for generating more electricity. After passing through the boilers the heat was pumped into the scrubbers and out the chimneys. While I worked there, there was rarely any smoke issuing from any part of the plant, steam yes, smoke no.

Part of my laborer job was to suit up, put on full face masks and climb into the boilers to run air powered butterflies and clean the iron dust collecting in the through tubes.
Because we literally sprayed ourselves continually with powdered iron dust, clothes were not much of a barrier and we trailed little dust clouds everywhere we went.

One of my close friends worked in the open hearth steel plant and his laborer job required that he and his crew open those louvered dust collectors and literally shovel their way down the stairs, through the maze of louvers until they ended up under the boilers. Iron dust can be incredibly heavy.
Yet these laborers working underground shoveling iron dust filed a Union grievance about us dirtier people sitting with them at lunch and on transportation. Grounds were found for their grievance and we got to eat alone and our own little electric transport three wheeler.

Rough summation:
Powerhouse - Fuel - LNG (liquid natural gas) - produced electricity and steam
Blast Furnace - Fuel - Coal turned to coke
Open Hearth - Fuel - LNG and exothermic materials - produced electricity with waste heat
Rolling and pipe mills - Fuel - LNG

The steel mill was connected to the local electrical grid. If they were short of electricity, unlikely they pulled it from the grid at discount prices. Overabundance of electricity was fed to the local grid at set prices.

Water was pulled from the Delaware River and processed through to clean the water for drinking. Excess water went into the local water supply, large overhead tanks to provide sufficient water pressure. By the same concept, the steel mill processed the local communities waste water. Now that was a fun job, shoveling up the dried processed municipal wastes out of the greenhouses where they dried the stuff... You probably don't want to know more...

So, no I am not surprised by the 6% electricity 'costs'. I doubt that is the sum total of all fuel costs though. Consider, in oxygen driven processes, is oxygen a fuel or component?

In any case, labor expenses must be the largest percentage of expense. Equipment would fall under capital costs and are not included.

To put some things into perspective: Driving into the steel plant I would pass a 'safety sign' three mile from the entrance. The sign would list how many days since the last major injury and days since the last death. Always a sobering thought, especially since I never saw the days since death surpass 42 days. Injuries never got past three days.

At the main gate I would pick up my time card, blank, at a drive through entrance with something like eight lanes in and out. One mile further into the plant I would reach the powerhouse where I worked, passing the open hearth and blast furnace on the way. Two miles in to reach the rolling mill. The pipe mill was on the other side of the plant.

9,000 people worked at that mill while I worked there. That experience convinced me to return to schools when I earned sufficient funds.

Jan 21, 2016 at 6:20 AM | Unregistered CommenterATheoK

I remember when we were still in secondary school and we study about all the chemical elements and their components each. it was draining but fulfilling at the same time like as if youve known a whole lot of new things for discoveries. thats the reason why i am studying chemistry now. Please visit http://www.3mb.asia/

Apr 20, 2016 at 6:33 AM | Unregistered Commenterarmani perez

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>