ArcelorMittal gets EUR-75m EIB loan for carbon reduction projects

Luxembourg-based steelmaker ArcelorMittal SA (AMS:MT) has received a EUR-75-million (USD 68m) loan for two projects in Belgium designed to lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced on Monday.

The loan from the EIB is backed by InnovFin Energy Demonstration Projects and financed under Horizon 2020 and the NER 300 funding programme of the European Commission. It will be used for the Steelanol and Torero projects, which represent a total investment of EUR 215 million.

The two projects, to be located at the company's steelworks in Ghent near Zelzate, Flanders, are set to cut CO2 emissions by up to 350,000 tonnes annually in the first phase.

Steelanol will be a EUR-165-million demonstration facility which will capture waste gases from the blast furnace and turn them into recycled carbon ethanol. This will be the first commercial product of ArcelorMittal’s Carbalyst family of recycled carbon chemicals. The ethanol can then be blended and used as a liquid fuel.

The project, set to be completed in 2022, will utilise technology developed by LanzaTech. Primetals Technologies and E4tech are also involved.

Once operational, Steelanol is expected to produce up to 80 million litres (21m gallons) of ethanol annually.

Torero, a EUR-50-million demonstration plant, will convert waste wood into bio-coal, which will partially replace the coal currently used in the blast furnace. In the first stage of the project, the facility will have the capacity to convert up to 60,000 tonnes of waste wood into around 40,000 tonnes of bio-coal annually. This capacity will be doubled in the project's second stage, after the first Torero reactor starts working.

The Torero facility is being developed together with Torr-Coal, Renewi, Joanneum Research Centre, Graz University and Chalmers Technical University. It is expected to start operations by the end of 2022.

(EUR 1.0 = USD 0.913)

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