Hydrogen metallurgy in China
On September 27, Ansteel Group, the world third biggest steel company, announced the launch of its first hydrogen metallurgy plant. This plant will use green hydrogen to reduce iron ore.
The steel industry is one of the most carbon-intensive industries with the greatest decarbonization pressure, accounting for about 7.2% of global emissions. Rapid decarbonization of the steel industry is particularly urgent in China, which produced 1.03 billion tons of crude steel in 2021, accounting for about 53% of the global total output. Due to the emissions caused by the combustion of fuel used to provide high temperature and the emissions from the reaction process using coke as the main reducing agent, it is difficult to achieve complete decarbonization through electrification, and the potential of reducing emissions through energy efficiency improvement is limited. Therefore, using renewable hydrogen instead of coke to produce direct reduced iron and adding electric furnace to make steel will become one of the most promising solutions for the decarbonization of China’s steel industry.
By far, several leading companies in China steel industry have started their construction of hydrogen metallurgy plants, including Baowu Steel, world largest steel company and HBIS Group, which rank 4th in term of steel output globally.
Table: hydrogen metallurgy project in construction in China
