Tata Steel plans to import liquid hydrogen produced in Norway to the Netherlands for use in its steelworks.
Working with Norwegian producer Gen2 Energy and the Port of Amsterdam, vessels owned by CO2 shipper ECOLOG will transport liquid hydrogen into Amsterdam before conversion back to its gaseous state.
The partners plan to then feed the hydrogen into a planned pipeline network for delivery to Tata and other companies.
Currently planning four projects in Norway, Gen2 will use hydropower to produce green hydrogen.
Tata has major plans to clean up its Ijmuiden steel plant in the Netherlands, with hydrogen expected to play a central role.
Having said it would introduce direct reduced iron (DRI) in one or more of the plant’s furnaces in 2021, the steel major has ordered two DRI units from Danieli.
“Hydrogen-ready by design,” Danieli’s Energiron DRI plants can deliver DRI pellets with a carbon content of just 0.5% with “extensive use of hydrogen.”
In addition to the hydrogen plans, Tata has said it plans to capture the small amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from the cleaner steel production process.
Having signed a separate agreement alongside ECOLOG with Horisont Energie, the Port of Amsterdam, OCAP, Norway’s DNB and ABN AMRO, Tata plans to explore a CO2 corridor, where Dutch-captured CO2 could be exported to Norway.
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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