Energy efficiency in iron and steel manufacturing industry in malaysia

• Main Author: Thiruhselvam A / l Shanmugham
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Energy; Efficiency; Iron & Steel

Iron and Steel industry in Malaysia is one of the most successful industry running till date. Even though, the industry is increasing the economic stability of the country by manufacturing quality iron there are also some issues caused by the industry which will effect the environment. Iron and Steel industry requires high usage of energy and contributes to carbon dioxide emission due to combustion process. Hence, this thesis is to measure the energy efficiency of Iron and Steel Industry in Malaysia. Several important methods were used to perform this research on energy efficiency such as the calculation of energy intensity and also the calculation for amount of reduction of carbon dioxide in the environment. Identification of energy efficient technology such as Electric Arc Furnace which is commonly used in current Iron and Steel Industry. This technology uses electricity as its main resources to manufacture iron and steel. Hence, this technology can be even efficient by implementing process called as sequestration of carbon dioxide from EAF slag. This slags are capable of releasing some amount of carbon when exposed to the environment and sequestration can help to separate the carbon content from the slags to reduce emission of carbon to environment. In addition, this study focusses on 5 consecutive years which is from 2012 to 2016. Therefore, the results obtained was for this 5 years and software such as IPCC 2006 was used to calculate the carbon dioxide emission, graphs are plotted to discuss the current trend of carbon emissions caused by fuels used in the industry. Four main types of fuel which is natural gas, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), fuel oil and diesel. This fuels are commonly used for the process of iron making in Iron and Steel industry. The result from graph shows the contribution of the fuels causing carbon emission to the environment. The result obtained from the graph for calculation of energy intensity shows that as the years are increasing the energy intensity decrease because most of the companies starts to utilize Electric Arc Furnace technology which requires less energy compared to other technologies. Based on the results obtained from the graphs plotted it is proven that the reduction of energy intensity from 2012 to 2016 is approximately 57%. However, the results obtained from this research is properly validated with the appropriate sources such as previous research studies and journals.