Hydrogen direct reduction of iron

Assembled from 21 blocks · 2 evidence · 18 related

1. Story
2. The route that removes carbon from primary steelmaking by changing the reducing agent. In a direct-reduction shaft furnace, iron ore pellets are reduced in the solid state below the melting point; the conventional version uses reformed natural gas, and the hydrogen version uses hydrogen alone, so that the reaction product is water rather than carbon dioxide. The sponge iron produced is then melted in an electric arc furnace, usually with scrap, to make steel. The chemistry has been demonstrated: the Swedish HYBRIT consortium of SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall produced hydrogen-reduced sponge iron at its Luleå pilot and delivered the first steel made from it to Volvo in 2021. What has not been demonstrated is the economics at scale, and the reason is arithmetic rather than metallurgy. Reducing a tonne of iron takes tens of kilograms of hydrogen; producing hydrogen by electrolysis takes on the order of fifty kilowatt-hours per kilogram at system level; so a plant of ordinary commercial size needs electrolysers of hundreds of megawatts and a firm supply of low-carbon electricity measured in terawatt-hours a year. That is why the announced projects cluster in northern Scandinavia, in Spain and in places with exceptional wind or hydro resource, rather than beside the existing steel plants of the Ruhr, Anshan or the American Midwest. Not a place.
3. Knowledge
4. Heavy industry (steel, cement and chemicals)
5. Hydrogen direct reduction of iron
6. Electrolytic (green) hydrogen
7. Connections
8. Stegra green steel plant, Boden
9. Heavy industry (steel, cement and chemicals)
10. Electrolytic (green) hydrogen
11. HYBRIT delivers the first hydrogen-reduced steel
12. The electrified share of final energy
13. Process emissions from calcination
14. Hydrogen direct reduction of iron
15. HYBRIT delivers the first hydrogen-reduced steel
16. Hydrogen direct reduction of iron
17. Photovoltaic solar generation
18. HYBRIT delivers the first hydrogen-reduced steel
19. Evidence
20. Supports the account of blast-furnace reduction chemistry, the clinker calcination process emission and its approximate share of cement emissions, the process heat temperature requirements, and the abatement option set of hydrogen direct reduction, scrap-based electric arc steelmaking, clinker substitution and carbon capture. V55 verification basis: neither roadmap was retrieved in this session; publication years are stated as the author recalls them and should be confirmed, and all quantitative shares in the citing objects are given as ranges.
21. Supports the account of existing world hydrogen demand and its fossil origin, electrolyser system energy intensity, and the very large gap between announced low-emissions hydrogen capacity for 2030 and the capacity that has reached a final investment decision. V55 verification basis: not retrieved in this session; the final-investment-decision share is described as a small minority rather than as the single-digit percentage the series reports, because the figure differs between editions and none was read.