Hydrogen metallurgy processes

Hydrogen metallurgy is a technique that uses hydrogen instead of carbon as a reduction agent to minimize CO2 emission. Because the use of hydrogen is advantageous to encouraging the sustainable growth of the steel industry, hydrogen metallurgy is a technology that reduces CO2 emission.

hydrogen metallurgy of metals

Hydrogen metallurgy has a wide range of potential applications, including H2 reduction ironmaking in Japan, ULCORED and hydrogen-based steelmaking in Europe, hydrogen flash ironmaking technology in the United States, HYBRIT in the Nordics, Midrex H2TM by Midrex Technologies, Inc. (United States), H2FUTURE by Voestalpine (Austria), and SALCOS by Salzgitter AG (Germany). In China, carbon monoxide gas (COG) is often injected into hydrogen-rich blast furnaces (BFs). Running BFs have been put through their paces in the industrial testing realm by AnSteel, XuSteel, and BenSteel.

hydrogen metallurgy technology

Using the Ende method, a reducing gas with 57 volume percent of hydrogen and 38 volume percent of carbon monoxide is produced in a pilot plant for a coal gasification–gas-based shaft furnace that is currently under construction and will have an annual output of 10000 metric tons of direct reduction iron (DRI). As a functional unit, one ton of molten steel is used in the analysis of the life cycle of the short process that consists of coal gasification, a gas-based shaft furnace, and an electric furnace (30 weight percent DRI and 70 weight percent scrap). When compared to those of a conventional BF converter process, this plant’s total energy consumption per ton of steel is 263.67 kg standard coal, and its CO2 emission per ton of steel is 829.89 kg. Both of these figures are better.

additive metallurgy with hydrogen

We think that a hydrogen-rich shaft furnace will be ideal for use in China given the country’s available materials and fuels, methods for producing and storing hydrogen, and the features of hydrogen reduction. The generation and storage of hydrogen via an industrialisation that is both economically viable and on a large scale will encourage the future development of a complete hydrogen shaft furnace.

Japan’s hydrogen-reduction steelmaking

The path taken by the COURSE50 project, which is shown in Figure 1, comprises the use of two primary technologies in order to accomplish CO2 emission: hydrogen-rich reduction and CO2 collection and recovery from a BF exhaust. The first method utilizes a reforming technique that uses coke oven gas (COG) and water, in addition to an innovative coking technology, in order to produce coke that is both highly resistant and highly reactive. The latter makes use of waste heat via the use of an effective technique for the absorption of carbon dioxide. Nippon Steel built a 12 m3 experimental BF with a productivity of 35 t/d and confirmed the project emission reduction target of 10% reduction by hydrogen reduction ironmaking and 20% reduction by CO2 recovery; therefore, the overall emission reduction target is 30%. This was accomplished by confirming the project’s overall emission reduction target.

Japan Uses of hydrogen in metallurgy

To lessen the amount of carbon dioxide released during the blast furnace (BF) process, hydrogen is used to substitute some of the coke. Carbon emissions were shown to be decreased by 9.4 percentage points compared to non-H2 injected operations in the first stage of an experimental BF operation in 2014-2016. To compensate for the low density of hydrogen and the endothermic processes that precede its reduction, BFs may be moved about in the stack and raceway, and H2 can be heated before being injected. In the next phase, we scale up the experiment to better reflect real-world BF conditions (often between 4000 and 5000 m3). By 2050, the technology needed to run a BF using H2 reduction will be commercially accessible in Japan. Production of hydrogen from COG has also inspired the development of the COURSE50 project. H2 is produced when COG, heated to 800°C as it exits a carbonization chamber, is combined with the catalytic cracking of tar and hydrocarbon compounds. This technique has been successfully tested in the industrial setting. COG’s H2 concentration is increased from 55vol% to 63vol%-67vol% and its gas volume is increased by a factor of 2 by this adjustment [18].

Nippon Steel Co. vice president Inoue [19] reported at the 12th CSM Steel Congress that the country has already begun or is planning to implement a number of relevant hydrogen metallurgy technologies, including H2 reduction in BF (internal and external H2), H2 reduction without BF, CO2 capture and storage (CCS), and CO2 capture utilization (CCU).