Enhancing the production of liquid hydrocarbons by coupling blast furnace gas (BFG) of steelwork with syngas in the GTL process

Steelwork is one of the main emitters of CO₂ in the world. For this reason, many efforts are being made to reduce or avoid CO₂ emissions by unit optimization or by carbon capture and storage (CCS) or utilization (CCU) processes. In the steelwork, three main off-gases are generated including the Blast Furnace Gas (BFG), the Coke-Oven Gas (COG), and the Basic Oxygen Furnace Gas (BOFG). Different processes and technologies can be proposed for recovery based on the volume and composition of the steelwork off-gases. In this paper, the BFG stream is utilized to improve the efficiency of the GTL process and reduce CO₂ emissions. For this purpose, a part of the BFG gases is mixed with the syngas produced in the methane autothermal reforming process and injected into the Fischer-Tropsch reactor to produce liquid hydrocarbons. The BFG flow rate was determined according to the optimum H₂/CO value. The pressure and volume of the reactor were set at 10 bar and 300 m³ for optimal hydrocarbon production. The simulation results showed that mixing a portion of the BFG with the syngas increases the C₅⁺ production by 11268 bbl/day, while the CO₂ emissions decreased by 146529 ton/yr.