Masdar and UAE steel firm EMSTEEL have completed a green hydrogen-based steel pilot project in Abu Dhabi.
Based at EMSTEEL’s facility, the project uses green hydrogen to reduce iron ore before processing it into steel, which the companies say could reduce steelmaking carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by up to 95%.
Now fully operational, renewable hydrogen produced by the project has been certified by Advance Labs, in line with the ISO 19870 methodology for hydrogen, released at COP28 last year. Masdar added that Bureau Veritas verified the data.
It comes after Masdar and EMSTEEL (then Emirates Steel Arkan), in 2022 partnered to develop the project, which is claimed to be a first of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Read more:Hydrogen-based steel production project to be established in the UAE
“This project demonstrates world-class innovation as a result of our partnership with EMSTEEL to produce green steel utilising green hydrogen,” Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, Masdar CEO, stated.
Planned to lay the groundwork for EMSTEEL to decarbonise its wider operations, Group CEO, Saeed Ghumran Al Remeithi, said, “Our partnership with Masdar will play a key role in continuing to build on our efforts to decarbonise this hard-to-abate sector and the downstream supply chain.”
Will DRI be key to producing sustainable steel?
Steel production accounts for 8% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions1, making it one of the most polluting industries. With around 1.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions per tonne of steel produced2, against a backdrop of increasing environmental concerns, the need to clean up the process that produces a vitally important material only continues to grow.
Steel, in the most basic sense, is made by mixing carbon and iron at temperatures above 1,400˚C. Primary steelmaking uses a product dubbed Pig Iron – smelted iron from ore, which contains more carbon than needed for steel.
Steelmakers can use a system that bubbles oxygen through molten pig iron, creating equal oxidisation throughout the metal, in doing so, removing excess carbon, while also vaporising or binding impurities made up of elements such as silicon, phosphorus and manganese.
The systems, known as blast furnace-basic oxygen furnaces (BF-BOF), are one of the leading contributors to CO2 emissions from steelmaking. The direct emissions from integrated BOF plants typically amount to 1.8-3.0 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel when coal-fired, and 0.7-1.2 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel if gas-fired3.
However, a system first industrialised in the 1960s that uses fuels to react with oxygen in iron oxide pellets to produce highly metallised reduced iron for steelmaking, looks set to benefit from green hydrogen, leaving just steam as the residual, and potentially reducing CO2 emissions by over 95% – the direct reduction of iron – DRI…
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