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The steel industry, which accounts for approximately 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, faces a growing challenge in implementing sustainable practices. Industrial symbiosis is a viable solution that promotes inter-industry collaboration to reutilize waste materials, decrease emissions, and improve resource efficiency. This systematic literature review examines its implementation in the steel industry, emphasizing its environmental, economic, and technical effects. The scientific value-added of this study is its systemic approach, moving beyond localized, discrete waste-exchange analyses to quantify the benefits and barriers of macro-level industrial symbiosis integration across the steel supply chain. The primary finding confirms the essential role of iron and steel production residues (i.e. blast furnace slag and electric arc furnace dust) in highly effective cross-sectoral applications, most notably in the cement and construction industries, leading to substantial CO2 and cost reductions. Novel applications include residues utilization in wastewater treatment and carbon capture. Despite these benefits, obstacles such as variable by-product quality, regulatory challenges, and substantial initial infrastructure expenses prevent the extensive adoption of industrial symbiosis. Although experimental studies have focused on waste recycling strategies and controlled outcomes, case studies have shown the benefits of its integration across sectors, highlighting resource-sharing networks, energy savings, and material exchanges. Finally, this review highlights that scaling industrial symbiosis requires a shift toward targeted regulatory support, strategic implementation of digital technologies, and a strong focus in future research on life cycle assessment integrated modelling and techno-economic validation to maximize its long-term environmental contribution.
Brescini et al. (Thu,) studied this question.