Thyseenkrupp has received a grant from local authorities to test the use of hydrogen in steelmaking, in order to advance the Duisburg site’s transformation into a climate-friendly plant.
In line with similar targets by other European steelmakers, thyssenkrupp is planning to reduce by some 80% its CO2 production by 2050. As part of this process it plans to test the replacement of some of the coal dust used as a reducing agent in the blast furnace by the injection of hydrogen.
“With the use of hydrogen at our blast furnace 9, we continue to work consistently on the conversion of our production processes,” explains Arnd Köfler, production director of thyssenkrupp Steel Europe. “Our goal is almost CO2-neutral steel production. This will be a long and costly process, and we will take another step today. In the first months of this project, we will first test the use of hydrogen in one of 28 blow moulds in a blast furnace. This is an innovation and has not been implemented so far in the industry. We will analyse the results of this test phase to then convert the entire blast furnace in this way in a second phase.”
To confirm its attention to the climate, thyssenkrupp also launched last year its Carbon2Chem project, converting emissions into chemical products used as valuable raw materials.
