Crude steel, cast semis (slabs, blooms, billets) from the BOF

Activity Crude steel by the integrated blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace route, RER: the inventory of 1 kilogram of its reference product, attributional, cut-off.

Calculation maturity: not assessed Design maturity: Concept (research)Not independently reviewediron-steel-1:iron-steel-bf-bof-integrated:product:steelPreliminaryReport a problem with this dataset

Research outputAn inventory from a research design at the design maturity its process states, not verified plant data: check its calculation maturity and review status before use. Background activities are referenced by name only; no background data is included. All caveats

What it is

Per 1 t of crude steel (liquid steel cast into semis), gate-to-gate, an integrated works with coke ovens, sinter plant, blast furnace and BOF steel plant, from the EU Iron and Steel BREF data collection (2004-2005). Batch steps (coke oven charges, converter heats) are taken as a time average over the works. Process gases are burnt at the works; CO2 from an IPCC Tier 2 carbon balance.

Reference product: 1 kilogram of Crude steel, cast semis (slabs, blooms, billets) from the BOF
Chemical: crude-steel
CAS: not available
Code: iron-steel-1:iron-steel-bf-bof-integrated:product:steel
Dataset: iron-steel-bf-bof-integrated version 0.1.0 · UUID d1bc5bb4-2888-57eb-bd00-49c3693bde56
Activity UUID: not available (the library assigns none; use the code)
Database: cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4 (version preview-a3c52e4)
Process: Crude steel by the integrated blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace route
Geography: RER · background inputs with a site rule link at the user's site location (default DE)
Time period: 2004 · valid until 2009
Technology: coke ovens with by-product recovery, strand sintering, blast furnace with coal and oil injection and oxygen enrichment, top-blown oxygen converter with scrap, continuous casting; pellets bought, no pellet plant · level current
Boundary: gate-to-gate: coke oven plant with gas treatment, sinter plant, blast furnace with hot stoves, BOF steel plant with secondary metallurgy and continuous casting; the process gases are burnt at the works (power plant, stoves, mills) and their CO2 is counted here; ore, coal, fluxes, scrap, oxygen, nitrogen and purchased power from outside; hot rolling and finishing excluded
Classification: ISIC Rev.4 2410 (taxonomy/families.yaml (ISIC Rev.4) of the process's families)
System model: attributional, cut-off (docs/system-model.md, methodology 1.1.0)
Allocation: shares, 100 % of the dataset to this product (rule deviation, from dataset)
The library hierarchy (docs/system-model.md section 2, step 3) would decide between economic and mass allocation by the price ratio of the co-products, but no open prices of the slags, tar, light oil and sulfur are sourced, so the ratio cannot be computed. Mass allocation would give the steel only about 70 % of the burdens (the slags 28 %), which is not a physical relationship for a slag; that the steel-to-slag price ratio is far above 5, so that the rule would choose economic allocation with nearly all of the burden on the steel, is ASSUMED and not sourced. Tar, light oil and sulfur are each below 1 % of the output mass. Shares 1/0 are the conservative choice for the steel until prices are sourced. Also not allocated, and counted against the steel: the works' exported energy (process-gas surplus, top-gas turbine power, steam; system_boundary.excluded) is neither a co-product nor credited, while the CO2 of all process gases burnt is counted and the 143 kWh/t of electricity is bought gross from the grid, so electricity the works makes from its own gases is counted twice (CO2 here and grid power). Both make this an upper view for steel.
Rights: CC-BY-4.0

Exchanges per 1 kilogram of Crude steel, cast semis (slabs, blooms, billets) from the BOF

As exported: allocated and scaled to the reference product. Provenance: 27 calculated, 4 given. Pedigree scores (1 best, 5 worst): reliability, completeness, temporal correlation, geographical correlation, further technological correlation.

Preliminary15 exchanges are not yet linked to a background dataset. They count no burden, so the inventory is incomplete: do not read a result from it as complete.

Input	Amount	Unit	Provenance	Pedigree	Linked to
Coking coal (as received, with its moisture) to the coke ovens feed:coking-coal coke demand (BF coke, sinter coke breeze, converter coke; all coke made on site: ASSUMED, as IPCC Tier 1) times dry coal per t coke, turned into coal as received with the coal moisture (w_cc); EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Tables 3.2, 5.2, 6.1, 7.3 and section 5.2.2.2	0.5098	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'coking-coal'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Coal injected at the blast furnace tuyeres feed:pci-coal EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 6.1 weighted average times hot metal per t LS (Table 7.3)	0.1392	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'hard-coal'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Oil injected at the blast furnace tuyeres feed:fuel-oil EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 6.1 weighted average times hot metal per t LS	0.02587	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'heavy-fuel-oil'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Natural gas (tuyere injection, hot stoves, steel plant) feed:natural-gas EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 6.1 (tuyeres, stoves) and Table 7.3 (steel plant); MJ to kg by the LHV of methane (library convention); combustion counted in emission:CO2	0.01252	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	Atlas: natural gas, per kg, as methane (Atlas unit proxy) (natural gas, by mass, GLO)
Iron ore (sinter feed fines) to the sinter plant feed:iron-ore-fines EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 3.2 average times sinter per t HM (Table 6.1) and hot metal per t LS (Table 7.3)	0.7604	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'iron-ore'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Lump iron ore to the blast furnace and the converter feed:iron-ore-lump EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 6.1 weighted average and Table 7.3	0.1644	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'iron-ore'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Iron ore pellets (bought) to the blast furnace feed:pellets EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 6.1 weighted average times hot metal per t LS	0.3077	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'iron-ore-pellets'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Limestone (and dolomite) fluxes to the sinter plant and blast furnace feed:limestone EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 3.2 and Table 6.1; the dolomite share and the BF lime share are counted as limestone (ASSUMED)	0.1447	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	market for limestone, crushed, washed (limestone, crushed, washed, RoW) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Burnt lime to the sinter plant and the converter feed:lime EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 3.2 average and Table 7.3 range midpoint	0.05804	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	Atlas (pinned): Quicklime by calcination of limestone in a natural-gas-fired parallel flow regenerative kiln (Calcium oxide, Quicklime, high-calcium, lump (counted as CaO), RER) compatible: grade the input names calcium-oxide only; calcium-oxide (Calcium oxide, Quicklime, high-calcium, lump (counted as CaO)) is taken; unit kilogram; system model cutoff (one database); allocation mass (deviation); boundary plant gate (pinned): no distribution or losses; the consumer's dataset counts its delivery
Dolomite to the converter feed:dolomite EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 7.3	0.0142	kilogram	given	3 4 5 3 3	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'dolomite'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Other sinter additives feed:sinter-additives EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 3.2 average (the source does not name them)	0.02469	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (no chemical slug or factor id); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Steel scrap to the converter feed:scrap EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 7.3; under cut-off scrap enters without the burden of its first life	0.2205	kilogram	given	3 4 5 3 3	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'steel-scrap'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Other iron-bearing material to the converter feed:other-iron EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 7.3 (not named in the source)	0.03	kilogram	given	3 4 5 3 3	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (no chemical slug or factor id); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Ferroalloys (Fe-Ti, Fe-W, Fe-Ni, Fe-V, Fe-Si, Fe-Mo) feed:ferroalloys EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 7.3 and its note 5; the alloy mix depends on the grade	0.01715	kilogram	given	3 4 5 3 3	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'ferroalloys'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Oxygen, 99.5 % or more, to the blast furnace and the converter feed:oxygen EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 6.1 (tuyeres, kg) and Table 7.3 (converter, Nm3 at the registry density)	0.1321	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	Atlas (pinned): Cryogenic air separation unit (500 t/d GOX) (Oxygen, gaseous, >= 99.5 mol%, 30 barg, GLO) compatible: grade the input names oxygen only; oxygen/gox-30barg-99.5 (Oxygen, gaseous, >= 99.5 mol%, 30 barg) is taken; unit kilogram; system model cutoff (one database); allocation exergy (physical-exergy); boundary plant gate (pinned): no distribution or losses; the consumer's dataset counts its delivery
Nitrogen to the blast furnace and the converter feed:nitrogen EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 6.1 and Table 7.3 (Nm3 at the registry density)	0.06225	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	Atlas (pinned): Cryogenic air separation unit (500 t/d GOX) (Nitrogen, gaseous, <= 10 ppm O2, 8 barg, GLO) compatible: grade the input names nitrogen only; nitrogen/gan-8barg-10ppm (Nitrogen, gaseous, <= 10 ppm O2, 8 barg) is taken; unit kilogram; system model cutoff (one database); allocation exergy (physical-exergy); boundary plant gate (pinned): no distribution or losses; the consumer's dataset counts its delivery
Argon to the converter (stirring) feed:argon EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Table 7.3 (Nm3 at the registry density)	0.001472	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	unlinked unlinked, no technosphere mapping: no mapping (chemical 'argon'); add it to lci/mappings.yaml technosphere or to the process's lca/mappings.yaml exchanges
Electricity, purchased (gross: the works' own generation from process gases is not credited) feed:electricity EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Tables 3.2, 5.2, 6.1 and 7.3: the four plants' electricity per t LS, MJ / 3.6 electricity	0.1431	kilowatt hour	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	market for electricity, medium voltage (electricity, medium voltage, DE, site location) in your background (default ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff)
Waste water of the coke oven and sinter plants to treatment output:wastewater EU JRC (2013) Iron and Steel Production BREF, EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469, Tables 5.2 and 3.4; BF, BOF and casting waste water not counted (see system_boundary)	0.1474	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4	Atlas (plant): wastewater to treatment, per kg (Atlas unit proxy) (wastewater, by mass, GLO) compatible: grade the input names wastewater only; wastewater (Wastewater treated) is taken; unit kilogram; system model cutoff (one database); allocation mass (single-output); boundary plant gate of a site utility: no utility market yet (docs/markets.md)

Elementary flows

Flow	Direction	Compartment	Amount	Unit	Provenance	Pedigree
Carbon dioxide, fossil 349b29d1-3e58-4c66-98b9-9d1a076efd2e	emission	air	1.802	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
Carbon monoxide, fossil ba2f3f82-c93a-47a5-822a-37ec97495275	emission	air	0.02605	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
Methane, fossil 0795345f-c7ae-410c-ad25-1845784c75f5	emission	air	6.549e-5	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
Sulfur dioxide fd7aa71c-508c-480d-81a6-8052aad92646	emission	air	8.516e-4	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
Nitrogen oxides c1b91234-6f24-417b-8309-46111d09c457	emission	air	0.001029	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
Dust, total particulates (sinter strand, coke plant, blast furnace, converter) emission:PM unlinked unlinked, no biosphere mapping: emission of PM (fossil) has no biosphere3 flow identity and is not in lci/mappings.yaml biosphere	emission	not linked	4.788e-4	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
H2S (coke plant, slag granulation) emission:H2S unlinked unlinked, no biosphere mapping: emission of H2S (fossil) has no biosphere3 flow identity and is not in lci/mappings.yaml biosphere	emission	not linked	7.381e-5	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
Ammonia 87883a4e-1e3e-4c9d-90c0-f1bea36f8014	emission	air	4.424e-6	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
Benzene 28999907-a8a7-45b3-857e-836495ca2aa0	emission	air	7.917e-6	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
Hydrochloric acid c9a8073a-8a19-5b9b-a120-7d549563b67b	emission	air	3.97e-4	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
HF (sinter strand) emission:HF unlinked unlinked, no biosphere mapping: emission of HF (fossil) has no biosphere3 flow identity and is not in lci/mappings.yaml biosphere	emission	not linked	4.021e-6	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4
NMVOC, non-methane volatile organic compounds d3260d0e-8203-4cbb-a45a-6a13131a5108	emission	air	1.227e-4	kilogram	calculated	4 4 5 4 4

Where these numbers come from: each exchange names its source above; the dataset is processes/iron-steel-1/lca/datasets/iron-steel-bf-bof-integrated.yaml in library version a3c52e4.

Used by

No other activity of this database links to it.

How good it is

Review: Not reviewed: no LCI review record yet
Data quality: not available
Mass and carbon closure: Not available: a hand-written dataset: no lca/manifest.json records its balance
Change report: Not available: this build has no change report against an earlier release.

KPI benchmark positions

KPI	Value	Reference range	Position
Direct fossil CO2 per t of crude steel, integrated BF-BOF works (coke ovens, sinter, BF, BOF; all process gas burnt at the works) No open source with a works-level figure for this boundary found (2026-11-05). Read: IPCC 2006 Vol. 3 ch. 4 (Table 4.1, p. 4.25) gives a Tier 1 factor of 1.46 t CO2/t for BOF steelmaking with blast furnace iron making (world data of 2003, expert consensus), but it leaves out the coke ovens and the sinter plant, which the Tier 1 method adds with factors of their own (0.56 t/t coke, Equation 4.1; 0.20 t/t sinter, Equation 4.7); Pardo, Moya and Vatopoulos (2012), JRC EUR 25543 EN, doi:10.2790/64264, Table 2, p. 13, give direct CO2 per plant (coke 0.794, sinter 0.200, BF 1.219, BOS 0.181 t/t), and their route figures (Figure 19, about 1.8 t/t for the best integrated performers) leave out the works' power plants; the Iron and Steel BREF (EUR 25521 EN) gives no works-level CO2 per t. For context only (our arithmetic, not a range of any source): the IPCC Tier 1 factors at this dataset's 935 kg sinter and 351 kg coke per t give about 1840 kg/t, and Pardo et al.'s per-plant values at the same ratios about 1690 kg/t (without the power plants).	– kg/t	not available	not evaluated
Purchased electricity per t of crude steel, integrated BF-BOF route No open source with a site-level electricity figure per t of crude steel for integrated works found (2026-11-05). Read: the Iron and Steel BREF (EUR 25521 EN) gives electricity per plant only (Tables 3.2, 5.2, 6.1, 7.3), which the dataset sums, and its section 7.2.2.4 estimate for the converter alone; Pardo, Moya and Vatopoulos (2012), JRC EUR 25543 EN, Table 2, gives direct and primary energy per plant, not electricity; IPCC 2006 Vol. 3 ch. 4 gives none. The dataset's value is gross: the works' own generation from process gases is not credited.	– kWh/t	not available	not evaluated
Scrap charged to the converter per t of liquid steel	– kg/t	101 to 340 kg/t Remus, R. et al. (2013) Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document for Iron and Steel Production. JRC Reference Report EUR 25521 EN, doi:10.2791/97469 (bref)	not evaluated

How to use it

Downloads

cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4.xlsx · bw2io ExcelImporter workbook (bw2io 0.9 Excel layout) · the whole database
code iron-steel-1:iron-steel-bf-bof-integrated:product:steel
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4-olca-jsonld.zip · openLCA JSON-LD (olca-schema) (2) · the whole database
process d1bc5bb4-2888-57eb-bd00-49c3693bde56 (processes/d1bc5bb4-2888-57eb-bd00-49c3693bde56.json) · the dataset's unallocated multi-output process; this product's allocation factor is in it
cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4-multifunctional.json · Brightway 2.5 multifunctional database (JSON, for the multifunctional package) (cheme-as-code/lci-multifunctional/v1) · the whole database
code iron-steel-1:iron-steel-bf-bof-integrated · the dataset unallocated, with all its products; this product is its desired_code
cheme_as_code_lci-0.1.0-py3-none-any.whl · the installer

A file with this activity alone is not available: each file above is the whole database, and the line under it says how to find this activity there.

import bw2data as bd
from cheme_as_code_lci import install

bd.projects.set_current("my-project")   # holds your licensed background + biosphere3
install("cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4.xlsx", background="ecoinvent-3.11-cutoff", location="DE")
activity = bd.get_activity(("cheme-as-code-atlas-preview-a3c52e4", "iron-steel-1:iron-steel-bf-bof-integrated:product:steel"))

While any exchange of the database has no mapping, install() writes nothing and only lists the unlinked exchanges. So the last line finds no activity until the gaps are mapped: the download section gives the ways to use the database now.

How to cite

Crude steel, cast semis (slabs, blooms, billets) from the BOF, from Crude steel by the integrated blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace route (dataset iron-steel-bf-bof-integrated 0.1.0), ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database preview-a3c52e4, activity iron-steel-1:iron-steel-bf-bof-integrated:product:steel. Cite the Process Atlas paper (in preparation, 2026), by Artur M. Schweidtmann and Jana M. Weber, and the ChemE-as-Code Process Atlas LCI database version preview-a3c52e4.

DOI: none yet (the Process Atlas paper is in preparation)

For the data, cite the Process Atlas paper; for the platform that builds and checks it, the ChemE-as-Code paper.

Schweidtmann, A. M. & Weber, J. M. (2026, in preparation). Process Atlas: an open, git-native, reproducible library and life cycle inventory of chemical processes (working title).

BibTeX

@unpublished{schweidtmann_process_atlas,
  author = {Schweidtmann, Artur M. and Weber, Jana M.},
  title = {{Process Atlas: an open, git-native, reproducible library and life cycle inventory of chemical processes (working title)}},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://atlas.cheme-as-code.org},
  note = {in preparation}
}

Schweidtmann, A. M. (2026). ChemE-as-Code: An Open-Source Platform for Agentic AI in Chemical Engineering. arXiv:2611.07947. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2611.07947

BibTeX

@misc{schweidtmann_cheme_as_code,
  author = {Schweidtmann, Artur M.},
  title = {{ChemE-as-Code: An Open-Source Platform for Agentic AI in Chemical Engineering}},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2611.07947},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2611.07947},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07947}
}