Green Hydrogen As Decarbonization Element for the Steel Industry

The iron and steel industry is responsible for approximately 30% of the global industrial CO2 emissions. The direct reduction process (DR) may be the first step to reduce the CO2-emissions from primary steel production. The high flexibility of this process allows the gradual substitution of syngas derived from natural gas (NG) by hydrogen (H2) as reducing agent. Therefore, process design models for the NG as well as a possible design for the hydrogen-based DR-process were developed and evaluated to point out possible CO2-reduction potentials and the additional energy demand required for the DR-process based on hydrogen.