ArcelorMittal

ArcelorMittal, one of the world's largest steel producers with operations across 18 countries and annual output of approximately 85 million tonnes, faced a structural emissions challenge embedded in its core production process. Blast furnaces — essential for smelting coal, limestone, and iron ore at temperatures exceeding 1,000°C — generate carbon by-products that are, under conventional operations, released as waste. The heavy industry sector accounts for 22% of global CO2 emissions, placing steelmakers under mounting regulatory and reputational pressure. ArcelorMittal set a self-directed target of reducing carbon emissions by 30% across its European operations by 2030, in alignment with the Paris Agreement's net-zero trajectory for 2050. Without intervention, these blast furnace emissions represented both a compliance liability and a wasted resource stream.

Led by CTO Wim Van der Stricht, ArcelorMittal developed a circular economy process at its Ghent, Belgium plant in collaboration with LanzaTech and Rockwell Automation. LanzaTech, a New Zealand biofuels firm, contributed a proprietary microbial biomass material proven to convert carbon gases from blast furnaces into bio-ethanol — a product branded 'Steelanol.' Rockwell Automation engineered the automation infrastructure underpinning the process, deploying a PlantPAx 5.0 distributed control system alongside drives, process control networks, and visualization tools. The system was designed to handle a repeatable, scalable flow: biomass is applied to captured blast furnace gases, then processed through a fermentation and distillation stage to yield marketable ethanol. The project attracted €159 million in total investment, including backing from the European Investment Bank, and was approximately eight years in development before reaching the assembly phase.

The Ghent facility is designed to produce approximately 64,000 tonnes of bio-ethanol per year with no discharge to the environment — converting a waste stream that previously contributed to CO2 emissions into a fully circular output. Key outcomes include:

• Waste elimination: Blast furnace carbon by-products redirected entirely into a saleable product
• Revenue diversification: Bio-ethanol enters high-demand markets including disinfectants, cleaning products, and plastics manufacturing
• Compliance positioning: Operations structured to meet the 30% emissions reduction target by 2030
• Talent attraction: The project generated unsolicited inbound interest from prospective employees seeking sustainability-driven work

ArcelorMittal has since established a blueprint to replicate the Ghent model across additional plants.

• Treating unavoidable industrial by-products as feedstock rather than waste can convert a compliance burden into a profitable secondary product line
• Ecosystem partnerships are foundational — LanzaTech's biological process and Rockwell Automation's control infrastructure were both necessary; neither alone was sufficient
• Long development cycles (8+ years here) are realistic for novel circular economy processes; executive and governmental buy-in early is essential to sustain momentum
• A proven proof-of-concept in one region (Asia-Pacific) provided the evidence base needed to justify replication at European scale
• Industrial DCS platforms like PlantPAx can serve non-traditional process flows when designed with the right partner expertise from the outset