Concern over the increasing carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere has led to increased research in the search for ways to suppress CO 2 emissions in primary steel production. It has been proposed as a promising concept the recycling of blast furnace gas, combined with CO 2 pickling. The article presents a numerical analysis of the superior gas recycling under massive oxygen enrichment of the explosion based on a simulation of the process chain of coal and mineral to liquid steel. Due to contradictory objectives of reducing both production costs and emissions, the task is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem. It was found that the optimum states of the studied system vary significantly at the Pareto border, demonstrating that fundamentally different operating states can be selected to greatly reduce emissions, keeping the steelmaking economically feasible. The findings highlight the importance of selecting an appropriate operating state to achieve cost-effective steel production with lower environmental impact. The results also show how emissions can be reduced "artificially" by minimizing emissions that arise within the system boundary.