“\"Hydrogen-based metallurgy\" has become a new trend in steel companies
Thread Content
“\"Hydrogen-based metallurgy\" has become a new trend among steel companies. China’s steel industry accounts for approximately 15% of the country’s total carbon dioxide emissions, and more than 60% of the carbon emissions generated by the global steel industry! Reducing carbon dioxide emissions has always been a major task for China’s steel enterprises. According to the Plan for the Adjustment and Upgrading of the Steel Industry (2016–2020), it is required that during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the total energy consumption and total pollutant emissions be reduced by more than 10% and 15% respectively. As environmental regulations become increasingly strict, steel companies will face ever greater pressure to reduce emissions. An industry expert said, “Apart from reducing emissions through hydrogen-based direct reduction technology and carbon capture and storage technologies, there are no other ways currently available to cut carbon dioxide emissions in the steel production process.” Carbon capture and storage technologies are end-of-pipe solutions that do not address the problem at its root. ”It can be considered that \"hydrogen-based steelmaking\" is the best known emission reduction technology in the steel industry at present.
Although \"hydrogen-based steelmaking\" is attracting increasing attention, the field is still in its infancy in China, and domestic companies are making continuous efforts to promote the green development of the steel industry. Among China’s steel enterprises, organizations such as Baowu Group, Hebei Iron and Steel Group, Jiuquan Iron and Steel Group, and Tsinghua University have already put forward relevant concepts, but the specific project plans still need to be implemented. Internationally, countries such as Germany, South Korea, and Sweden are already at the forefront. However, at present, in addition to the technical difficulties associated with \"hydrogen-based steel production\" itself, the source of hydrogen has also become a barrier. This is because steelmaking requires large amounts of high-purity, low-cost hydrogen, yet the cost of hydrogen remains high at present. To address the issue of hydrogen sources, CNNC has proposed the approach of \"producing hydrogen using nuclear energy and using hydrogen in steel manufacturing.\" By utilizing water as a raw material and waste heat as an energy source, nuclear reactors can be combined with advanced hydrogen production technologies to enable large-scale, low-cost hydrogen production.
The collaboration between hydrogen energy and the steel industry is a win-win situation; there is a natural connection between steel and hydrogen energy. Steel companies are both hydrogen producers and hydrogen consumers. As Wang Yidong, the deputy general manager of Ansteel, said, the cost of producing hydrogen in steel mills is very low ； For steel mills, it is possible to develop hydrogen energy alongside low-carbon metallurgy technologies in order to reduce carbon emissions. The collaboration between hydrogen energy and the steel industry is a win-win situation: hydrogen energy helps steel companies reduce emissions and energy consumption, expand their business operations, and undergo transformation, while steel companies provide more opportunities for the practical application of hydrogen energy, thereby fostering its development. Hydrogen energy and steel form an industry combination that enhances each other.
Internationally, Thyssenkrupp has already implemented the use of hydrogen in blast furnaces, and Ovako has also successfully experimented with using hydrogen as a high-temperature heat source for heating steel; various processes are currently being tested, marking the arrival of the era of \"hydrogen-based steel manufacturing\".
The establishment of the Hydrogen Metallurgy Research Institute marks Jiuquan Iron and Steel Group’s leadership in hydrogen metallurgy research and industrial application within the industry. Is it possible to directly reduce iron ore into iron with a metallization rate of around 95% in its solid state within 30 minutes, without going through processes such as mineral processing and sintering, and even without the coking process? Recently, Wang Minghua’s team at Jiugang turned this idea into reality. Based on this, Wang Minghua’s team has made significant breakthroughs in the theoretical research on coal-based hydrogen metallurgy. At present, Jiugang is constructing the world’s first pilot plant for coal-based hydrogen metallurgy, along with a supporting pilot plant for dry grinding and separation; it is expected to be completed and put into operation by the end of October this year. Based on the data from numerous experiments conducted by Wang Minghua’s team, compared with the traditional \"iron coking\" process, the coal-based hydrogen metallurgy process features a shorter operational sequence, fewer monitoring points, smaller-scale water circulation and treatment facilities, as well as fewer and less substantial flue gas emissions. It reduces energy consumption by over 50%, which is of great significance for achieving true energy savings and environmental protection.
The research achievements in coal-based hydrogen metallurgy by Wang Minghua’s team have attracted significant attention from experts and scholars at various institutions, including the University of Science and Technology Beijing, Lanzhou University of Technology, and Wuhan University of Science and Technology. Experts were highly impressed by the research achievements of Wang Minghua’s team, considering the discovery of coal-based hydrogen metallurgy to be a significant event in the world’s metallurgical industry; the theory behind coal-based hydrogen metallurgy provides a theoretical foundation for short-process iron production. Wang Minghua is the technical leader of Jiuquan Iron and Steel’s resource research team. Through thousands of experiments, he discovered that under certain temperature, space, and time conditions, a mixture composed of iron ore and high-volatility coal, when evenly blended, undergoes a hydrometallurgical process driven primarily by the oxygen in iron oxides, as well as the carbon and hydrogen elements in the coal; moreover, all three elements—oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen—are essential for this process to take place. Based on this discovery, Wang Minghua proposed the coal-based hydrogen metallurgy theory. Wang Minghua believes that in the aforementioned experimental process, H2 is first obtained through the complete pyrolysis of coal; the H2O generated by reducing iron oxides with H2 is then used as a gasification agent to gasify carbon, thereby producing more H2. This series of processes can generate sufficient amounts of H2 for hydrogen metallurgy. At the same time, the thorough pyrolysis of coal can be highly integrated with the metallurgical reduction process of iron ore at high temperatures, through the currently mature industrial plants for direct reduction using carbon metallurgy of iron ore. The modern mainstream iron-making process centered on blast furnaces, known as \"iron coking,\" is essentially a typical carbon metallurgy process, in which the reductant and fuel used are metallurgical coke. In the process of producing coke, in order to increase the yield of tar, people pursue incomplete pyrolysis of coal; pursuing complete pyrolysis of coal seems rather absurd. It was through the unconventional efforts to conduct experiments on the complete pyrolysis of coal that Wang Minghua’s team made new discoveries in coal-based hydrogen metallurgy. Wang Minghua’s team conducted comparative experiments on hydrogen metallurgy and carbon metallurgy using the concentrate and ore used by Jiugang, as well as iron-rich dust from dust removal processes, iron-rich waste residues from non-ferrous pyrometallurgical processes (copper and nickel slag), and iron-rich waste residues from non-ferrous hydrometallurgical processes. In each experiment, significant differences between the two methods were observed, and the results of the hydrogen metallurgy experiments were very promising. Most encouragingly, hydrogen metallurgy technology has successfully overcome the problem of reducing ferroolivine (iron silicate), which traditional carbon metallurgy cannot resolve in the solid state.