Low-grade iron ore for green steel
Hydrogen enables climate-friendly steel production
For the first time, an international research consortium has processed 80 tonnes of low-grade iron ore into directly reduced iron on an industrial scale.
According to the Fraunhofer Institute for Thin Film and Surface Technology, an international consortium in Namibia has achieved a significant milestone in climate-friendly steel production. Untreated iron ore with an iron content of around 56 per cent was processed in a hydrogen-fuelled rotary kiln.
A new raw material base for steel production
The SuSteelAG project is developing a process for hydrogen-based direct reduction that can also utilise lower-grade ores. Until now, this process has required high-grade ores with an iron content of around 70 per cent, which are scarce and expensive. Furthermore, they must be processed into pellets, a process that is both energy-intensive and costly.
To this end, 80 tonnes of Australian iron ore were processed in Namibia into directly reduced iron at a throughput of around five tonnes per hour. Research is now underway in Germany to investigate how this can be integrated into existing industrial processes in order to produce climate-friendly steel in future.
