ArcelorMittal Poland will build a hydrogen production plant for its Kraków branch, which stopped using coal for coke production in July.
Partly developed by Linde Gaz Polska and supported by a total investment of over PLN 100m ($23.9m), the hydrogen production plant will ensure a reliable supply of hydrogen for ArcelorMittal’s galvanising plants.
Whilst it hasn’t been revealed how much hydrogen the two companies expect to produce, the smelter in Kraków will reportedly be capable of using hydrogen by the end of 2026.
In addition to providing hydrogen fuel for the galvanising plants, ArcelorMittal also expects to completely eliminate ammonia from the process, which will increase the level of process safety of the plants.
“Our installations: the hot rolling mill and the cold rolling mill, as well as the galvanising and sheet metal painting lines, currently operate exclusively on the basis of natural gas,” explained Lukasz Skorupa, Vice President of the ArcelorMittal Poland Board and Director of the Kraków branch.
“We are currently completing a project to build hydrogen furnaces, which allowed us to eliminate ammonia in the annealing plant. Its cost is PLN 52m ($12.4m). The project with Linde, on the other hand, is to ensure a reliable supply of hydrogen for our galvanising plants.
“We are increasingly focusing on hydrogen,” he added.
Almost PLN 2.5bn ($598m) has been invested by ArcelorMittal in Kraków’s rolling mills and galvanising plants, according to Wojciech Koszuta, CEO of ArcelorMittal Poland. The aim now is to decarbonise its activities in steel and production and in processing.
Oleksandra Tuzhylina, CEO of Linde Gaz Polska, said, “As an expert with over a century of experience in the field of hydrogen production, distribution and storage, we were able to offer ArcelorMittal the best solutions available in the hydrogen sector, ensuring the highest level of operational plant safety and production process reliability.”
ArcelorMittal: We speak up when climate policy threatens steel viability
ArcelorMittal speaks up on climate policy when it believes the steel industry’s viability could be threatened, a company spokesperson told H2 View, amid allegations of green hydrogen subsidy misuse.
The comments come after a report by steel advocacy group, SteelWatch, alleged – among other things – that the steelmaker “actively lobbied” for slower or weaker climate policies in the EU and South Africa.
“The purpose of climate policy we believe should be to enable and incentivise the steel industry to transition to lower-carbon technologies,” the spokesperson said.
However, if climate policy would make steelmaking “unviable,” the spokesperson said, “we believe it is counterproductive, not fulfilling its purpose and potentially only leading to carbon leakage and theoretically higher emissions.”
“Our approach on climate policy is not to block climate policy – rather we speak up when we believe climate policy could impact the viability of the steel industry to operate,” the spokesperson told H2 View.
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