Hi all, In the steel industry, a process which has started gaining adoption in recent years is the production of steel from Direct Reduced Iron (DRI), rather than from pig iron produced from iron ore in a blast furnace.
To give context, the two existing widespread methods of steel production are: * Blast Furnace + Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF), where the blast furnace produces pig iron from iron ore, and the BOF refines it into steel * Electric Arc Furnace (EAF), where scrap steel and/or pig iron is refined into steel In contrast to this existing arrangement where the inputs are converted to steel within a single facility, a number of DRI facilities have been built independently of existing steel mills (often supplying EAF facilities). The solid pig iron is then transported to steel mills for further processing, either within a single company's range of sites, or sold on the open market to steel producers. For the time being, DRI plants remain less common, but most large steelmakers are investing in the technology for decarbonisation and cost reasons. How should DRI plants be tagged? I can see three options: 1. DRI plants receive a separate `industrial=???` tag to differentiate them from steel mills, because of the technical argument that they do not produce steel, only pig iron, the precursor to steel. 2. DRI plants are tagged as `industrial=steel_mill` with no differentiation from normal mills, because they're very closely associated with steelmaking. Additionally, OSM currently has very minimal industrial tagging (both in terms of the accepted tags, and how many sites are tagged), and so a special tag for such a small number of sites isn't worth it yet. 3. A new tag such as `steel_mill:process` is introduced to differentiate between different steel mills, with values along the lines of `integrated` (blast furnace+BOF), `basic_oxygen`, `electric_arc`, and `direct_reduction`. It is easy to determine what value is appropriate to a plant based on aerial photos or public information. An example of an independently located DRI plant is Cleveland-Cliff's Toledo plant: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/758332131 And US Steel is reportedly investing in DRI facilities at its iron ore mines: https://gmk.center/en/news/us-steel-completes-pilot-project-in-minnesota-to-produce-dr-pellets/ Cheers, Daniel
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