Steel Mills

US Steel’s Gary Works To Host Innovative Carbon Capture Study

Written by Laura Miller

June 22, 2022

An innovative and collaborative study to capture carbon emissions and inject them into concrete products for permanent storage will soon begin at US Steel’s Gary Works in northwest Indiana.

USS Gary Works Carbon STudy

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Prairie Research Institute will lead the study after receiving a research reward of almost $3.5 million from the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

The study’s focus will be on advancing a direct air capture and utilization system developed by CarbonCapture Inc. to remove 5,000 metric tons per year of CO2 from ambient air and then inject it into concrete products to be permanently mineralized. CO2 removal and utilization technologies from CarbonCure will be used to transport the liquified gas CO2 emissions to Ozinga ready-mix concrete plants.

“US Steel is committed to progressing our efforts described in our Climate Strategy Report to decarbonize and accelerate towards a lower carbon future, but we know that one company’s actions are not enough,” said Rich Fruehauf, the steelmaker’s senior vice president – chief strategy and sustainability officer. “Achieving our goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 is going to take unprecedented innovation and collaboration.”

“We’re very excited about participating in this groundbreaking study. Direct air capture is particularly effective when energy costs can be reduced via the use of waste heat and the captured CO2 can be permanently stored in concrete. At scale, we think this solution will lead to the removal of massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere,” CarbonCapture CEO Adrian Corless said.

By Laura Miller, Laura@SteelMarketUpdate.com

Laura Miller

Laura Miller is a reporter and editor for Steel Market Update. She has held a variety of positions within the steel industry since 2007, including reporting and editing for Steel Business Briefing/Platts, the Association for Iron and Steel Technology, and Kallanish Commodities, as well as marketing for what was then known as ThyssenKrupp Steel USA (now AM/NS Calvert). After a five-year hiatus working across other industries, she returned to steel in 2021 and has covered the flat rolled, tubular, and trade areas of the industry. She is a member of the Association of Women in the Metal Industries and a past-president of the AWMI Pittsburgh Chapter. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. She can be reached at laura@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7869.

Read more from Laura Miller

Latest in Steel Mills

Leibowitz: Biden block of Nippon-USS deal has broad, mostly bad consequences

As one of my university professors once said (and it’s stuck with me for half a century), “Change is the only permanency.” On Friday, President Biden acted to block the acquisition of United States Steel by Nippon Steel Corp. of Japan, without acknowledging the changes that have already occurred in the steel industry, and which are likely to increase. After more than a year of raging debate, it seems that nobody was convinced by arguments. Nippon’s worker-centered concessions, including safeguarding the jobs of U.S. Steel’s unionized workers and committing to more than $2 billion in investments for the aging plants at Gary, Ind., and the Mon Valley complex in Pennsylvania, were not mentioned in the president’s announcement on Friday.