Chinese steel producer Shougang and mining firm Rio Tinto have started up an industrial-scale carbon capture trial at the Shougang Jingtang base in Tangshan, Hebei Province. The facility is designed to capture up to 10,000 tonnes of CO2 per year from blast furnace gas. The companies are testing ways to use that CO2, including converting it into syngas and feeding it back into steelmaking, which could reduce the amount of new carbon needed. The project builds on a smaller capture unit commissioned in 2024 and is part of a broader partnership announced in 2022 to cut emissions across the steel value chain. The companies say waste heat from existing operations could lower capture costs. The trial comes as China's steel sector faces major overcapacity, with Wood Mackenzie projecting overcapacity could rise from 50 million tonnes to 250 million tonnes over the next decade.
