Voestalpine — a steel maker based in Linz, Austria — is to build an experimental facility for producing hydrogen. The company aims to use the element to help eradicate the carbon pollution that results from making steel in coal-fed blast furnaces.
It is in a consortium that has won an EU contract to develop an electrolysis pilot plant that will generate hydrogen (from water); this will be fed directly into Voestalpine’s gas network for testing in various process stages of steel production.
CEO Wolfgang Eder (pictured right) said: “Voestalpine is looking into the possibility of replacing coking coal — used to reduce iron ore to molten metal — with hydrogen in the production of crude steel.
Although this is about two decades away, it would represent a fundamental shift in steel-making technology with the potential to significantly reduce one of the largest sources of industrial CO
2 emissions.
“The de-carbonisation of steel making cannot happen overnight; it requires a long-term step-by-step transition. Voestalpine plans to make a gradual shift from the use of coal via bridging technologies, particularly those using natural gas to the potential use of hydrogen over the next 20 years.”
John Lichtenstein, of the Accenture Strategy consultancy group, said the move by Voestalpine and its partners was “significant”.
He added: “Hydrogen-based steel production has been the ‘holy grail’ for de-carbonised steel making for years, but the technology and economics at scale are unproven. It will have a long development — and thereby — investment period.”
Some industry experts are sceptical about the economic feasibility of new steel-making technologies. Carsten Riek, analyst at financial-services group UBS, said the commercialisation of novel production methods requires large sums of capital, “which is in short supply at many steel companies”.
He added: “You also have to have customers that are willing to take and test the product from the new process. That takes time.”