Hyundai Steel continues to establish itself as a “sustainable and eco-friendly steelmaker” and is quickly advancing towards realizing its goal of carbon neutrality.
Last month, Hyundai Steel and the Incheon Yeonsu Self-Support Center signed an MOU for the collection of used coffee grounds (coffee residue) from locations throughout Incheon. After collection, the coffee grounds are being sent to the Gyeongsangbukdo Government Public Institute of Health & Environment to be used for research on reducing odor from livestock facilities.
According to a study by the institute, using microbial-treated coffee grounds in livestock facilities reduces odor by up to 95%.
Coffee grounds is residue that is left over after coffee brewing. Korea imports about 150,000 tons of coffee beans annually. Only 0.2% of these imports are converted into brewed coffee, while the remaining 99.8% is disposed of as domestic waste to be incinerated or sent to landfills.
However, in March 2022, following studies on the different uses of used coffee grounds, it was officially designated a recycling resource by the Ministry of Environment, giving rise to expectations that it would soon be used in a variety of sectors.
An eco-friendly technology that replaces blast furnace fuel with cow manure has also been a point of focus among the environmentally conscious. In a collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, Hyundai Steel is planning to use solid cattle fuel in its blast furnaces within the year.
About 22 million tons of cattle manure are produced a year in Korea, most of which is only used as compost, generating more than 2 million tons (tCO2) of greenhouse gas per year.
The use of a single ton of cattle manure as solid fuel results in the recycling of 4 tons of livestock waste and a 1.5 ton (tCO2) reduction of greenhouse gases. It is expected that cattle manure will begin to replace imported raw materials as fuel, resulting in a secondary economic effect.
Efforts are also being made to replace imported minerals with semiconductor waste. Hyundai Steel and Samsung Electronics jointly developed a new technology that allows the wastewater sludge (sediment) generated during the semiconductor manufacturing process to be used as a subsidiary material for steelmaking.
During the steelmaking process at steel mills, fluorite is used to remove impurities, such as sulfur and phosphorus, from molten iron. The new technology was developed based on the fact that the main component found in semiconductor wastewater sludge has properties that are similar to fluorite.
Since Korea does not mine its own fluorite, it is entirely dependent on fluorite imported from South America, China and other regions. Hyundai Steel imports and uses about 20,000 tons of fluorite each year and plans to replace about 10,000 tons of fluorite with recycled wastewater sludge, gradually increasing this ratio in the future.
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