Another nail in coal’s coffin? German steel furnace runs on renewable hydrogen in world first

thyssenkrupp hydrogen steel production germany
Credit: supplied

German manufacturing giant Thyssenkrupp has completed a successful, first-of-its-kind demonstration of running a steel furnace completely on hydrogen, a development that is likely to further dent the future prospects for the global coal industry.

The company successfully demonstrated the ability for hydrogen to be used to fuel a steel blast furnace, and Thyssenkrupp sees the achievement as the first step towards transitioning the manufacturing industry towards zero-emissions steel production.

The use of hydrogen to fuel the blast furnaces in steel production also provides a pathway for using renewable hydrogen, potentially eliminating the dependence of the industry on coal.

“Today is a groundbreaking day for the steel industry,” chairman of thyssenkrupp Steel Europe Premal Desai told RenewEconomy in an interview in Sydney.

“We are doing pioneering work here. The use of hydrogen is the key lever for climate-neutral steel production. Today’s test is another step in the transformation of our production, which will culminate in green steel.

“At the same time, we see what is possible when business and government work together towards a common goal. We are very grateful to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for supporting the project.”

As part of the demonstration conducted in its ‘furnace 9’, thyssenkrupp fed hydrogen into one of 28 tuyeres, or nozzles, that otherwise supply coal into the blast furnace.

Following the successful trial, Thyssenkrupp plans to scale up the injection to all 28 tuyeres within the furnace and aims to eventually run at least three furnaces completely on hydrogen by 2023.

“We want to reduce emissions with hydrogen while continuing to produce pig iron of the same quality,” thyssenkrupp’s chief technical officer Dr Arnd Köfler said.

“At the same time we are breaking new ground with the tests on blast furnace 9, so it is now a question of continuously analyzing and evaluating the furnace’s operation. The results will help us to widen the use of hydrogen to all 28 tuyeres.”

The demonstration project was funded with the support of the North Rhine-Westphalia state government, with the direction to commence the injection of hydrogen fuel into the steel furnace being issued by the state economics and digital minister Dr Andreas Pinkwart.

“The project is an important step on the path to a greenhouse gas-neutral industry and a good example of how innovative key technologies can be developed in North Rhine-Westphalia. We need to keep driving the use of hydrogen in industry because it offers great opportunities, especially in steel production,” Pinkwart said.

Thyssenkrupp is one of the world’s largest steel producers and produces around 12 million tonnes of crude steel annually. The company has committed to achieving a 30 per cent reduction in the company’s emissions by 2030. The company is also aiming to become carbon neutral by 2050.

“We’ve set ourselves a clear goal with our climate strategy,” thyssenkrupp executive board member Dr Klaus Keysberg said.

“Steel production will play an important part in reaching our climate targets because the potential for reducing emissions is huge. That’s why we’re working flat out to drive the transition to hydrogen technology.”

It’s a huge development in the use of zero-emissions and renewable energy supplies in the manufacture of industrial products like steel and presents a major threat to the coal industry.

In conventional blast furnaces around 300 kilograms of coking coal and 200 kilograms of pulverised coal are used in the production of a tonne of pig iron.

Many have argued, including the leaders of both major Australian political parties and various members of the coal lobby, that coal will be required for decades to come, citing the need for coal in steel production to supply materials to the renewables industry.

Federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese recently told a CEDA conference in Perth that the growth in renewable electricity projects will drive demand for Australian coal.

“It takes more than 200 tonnes of metallurgical coal to produce one wind turbine,” Albanese said. “According to forecasts of global growth in wind power capacity to 2030, Australia could be exporting 15.5 million tonnes of coking coal to build these turbines.”

But this weeks demonstration by a major steel producer in thyssenkrupp puts that contention into question.

Thyssenkrupp has led research into the use of renewable hydrogen in steel production, work commencing in April to undertake preliminary research and simulations of injecting hydrogen into the steel furnace.

Thyssenkrupp sees the successful demonstration of hydrogen injection as a crucial step to transitioning this research into fully-fledged industrial application.

The company intends to commission new steel furnaces in the mid-2020s, that will initially use hydrogen to produce ‘sponge-iron’, that will be separately converted into crude steel using renewably powered electric-arc furnaces.

Michael Mazengarb is a Sydney-based reporter with RenewEconomy, writing on climate change, clean energy, electric vehicles and politics. Before joining RenewEconomy, Michael worked in climate and energy policy for more than a decade.

Comments

10 responses to “Another nail in coal’s coffin? German steel furnace runs on renewable hydrogen in world first”

  1. ReverseConcaveSpoon Avatar
    ReverseConcaveSpoon

    Massive news. The potential here is enormous. Time for Gupta or someone like him to kick off a large green hydrogen set up once the recent catalyst breakthrough also makes it to market level.

  2. Paul Surguy Avatar
    Paul Surguy

    That is good

  3. Aidan Stanger Avatar
    Aidan Stanger

    The steel industry is starting to undergo a revolution, and we will no longer need coal to fuel it.
    But the politicians needn’t panic because carbon is an ingredient of most steel, so steel industry demand for coal is unlikely to vanish completely.

  4. Stan Hlegeris Avatar
    Stan Hlegeris

    So does the hydrogen replace coking coal in some part of the chemical process?

    Or is it just replacing the coal as fuel to deliver heat for the process?

    1. dono Avatar
      dono

      Coal is not used in steel manufacture , its too dirty, coke is almost all carbon and coking coal is hard enough so it won’t crush into powder in the furnace. My reading of this is that the hydrogen is doing the same job as carbon, taking the O2 out of the iron ore.

  5. Liron L Avatar
    Liron L

    Great development, but this has to be commercially viable.

    1. Michael Murray Avatar
      Michael Murray

      Not really. Using coal is killing the environment. Even if it is cheaper it is still killing the environment.

  6. John Wass Avatar
    John Wass

    If this can be commercially viable. The Green Hydrogen can be made on site and the emissions will be saved from the mining and the transporting the Coal and the emissions from transforming the Coal into Coke.

  7. lin Avatar
    lin

    Excellent news!

  8. thinkmorebelieveless Avatar
    thinkmorebelieveless

    Ummmmm, isn’t water vapor, the emission product of this process, also a GHG? I guess it could be “captured” by condensation. Hopefully the hydrogen will be produced from water for a no net effect and not from natural gas.

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