By Loz
Blain
February 26, 2021
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Steel
production is responsible for about 8 percent of global carbon emissions
annually, but hydrogen-based production offers an opportunity to make the
process completely emissions-free Photo:
phonlamai/Depositphotos
VIEW 1 IMAGES
In typical production, blast or
electric arc furnaces combine iron ore and limestone with coke (coal that's been
baked at high temperatures to remove impurities) to create steel. But that coke
reductant can be replaced with hydrogen, resulting in a process that emits
nothing but water, and hydrogen can also be used to power the arc furnaces,
giving you a steel production pipeline that's totally emissions-free.
Every major steel producer in the
world is considering something similar to bring its emissions down, and there
are plenty of incentives for downstream customers like automakers to get on
board with green steel as it becomes available. A new development in Northern
Sweden, headed up by the current CEO of Scania, aims to get some volume into the
market early.
H2 Green Steel (H2GS) is working
with a budget of around US$3 billion dollars. It will use hydrogen produced with
renewable energy from Sweden's Boden-Luleå region, and production is scheduled
to begin in 2024. By 2030, H2GS expects to be producing five million tons of
high-quality zero-emissions steel annually.
The company says it'll be the
first large-scale fossil-free steel plant, producing hot rolled, cold rolled and
galvanized coils, which it expects to sell into the automotive, transportation,
construction, pipeline and whitegoods markets, among others.
“We want to accelerate the
transformation of the European steel industry," says Carl-Erik Lagercrantz,
Chairman of the H2GS board, in a press release. "Electrification was the first
step in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation industry. The
next step is to build vehicles from high-quality fossil-free steel.”
This project is another
encouraging indication of the increased appetite major investors are showing for
decarbonization initiatives, which typically involve more risk and a longer wait
for a return on investment than other places they could put their money.
But like all hydrogen-based
initiatives, the H2GS project is going to need the price of green hydrogen to
come down dramatically to realize its full potential. The vast majority of
hydrogen produced today is grey, or dirty, often involving the use of fossil
fuels such as natural gas or coal.
Source: H2
Green Steel