Steel Mills

Nucor Awarded Federal Grant for Carbon Capture Study

April 24, 2022

Nucor Corp. is partnering with the University of Kentucky (UK) Research Foundation on a new carbon dioxide capture system at the steelmaker’s Gallatin sheet mill in Ghent, Ky.

Nucor The innovative research partnership between Nucor and UK is one of 12 federally funded research projects by a Department of Energy (DOE) grant to advance point-source carbon capture and storage technologies that can capture CO2 emissions generated from natural gas power plants and industrial facilities that produce commodities like cement and steel, the company said.

“Nucor teammates, along with researchers at the University of Kentucky Research Foundation, recognized that to reach specific carbon reduction goals at industrial facilities, technologies like carbon sequestration need to become economically feasible,” said Scott Laurenti, Nucor Steel Gallatin general manager.

More than 50 industry and university experts will work on the project to study applying carbon capture and sequestration techniques to an electric-arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking process. Once this pilot is complete, the company said it “will have a better understanding of the costs and effectiveness of carbon capture technology for flue gas with low CO2 content and the feasibility of replication of this technology at other electric-arc furnace steel mills.”

“The successful construction and testing of this heat-integrated carbon capture process at Nucor Steel Gallatin shows great potential in lowering energy consumption at industrial sectors in Kentucky and across the nation,” said Kunlei Liu, principal investigator for the project and a member of UK’s College of Engineering faculty. “We at UK are fully committed to work with our industrial supporters and collaborators to fulfill their environmental goals while managing the associated costs.”

This project is supported by the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, the company said.

Seperately, Nucor Gallatin is expected to complete a $650 million expansion and upgrade in June.

By David Schollaert, David@SteelMarketUpdate.com

David Schollaert

David Schollaert is a senior analyst for Steel Market Update. David joined SMU after more than a decade in the metals and mining industry in a myriad of different roles. Much of his early experience and expertise were within the coverage and analysis of steel-making raw materials and served previously as senior editor of the CRU Prices Service. Most recently, however, before his return to market analysis, David held roles as a metals buyer and an operations manager for raw material suppliers. Based in CRU’s Pittsburgh office, David can be reached at david@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-720-1008.