Uci advanced power and energy program

Researchers will develop the technological basis, build and demonstrate a small-scale prototype unit and study the feasibility of future scale-up and commercialization. Traditional steel manufacturing plants, known as integrated cycle steel mills, use blast furnaces that employ coke and coal-derived gases to convert iron ore into metallic iron. The DRI process employs shaft furnaces with temperatures below 1, degrees centigrade to chemically strip oxygen from the iron ore, which is a much more energy-efficient approach.

The newly funded three-year project seeks to integrate hydrogen produced through electrolysis — an electrochemical process that uses electricity and heat to split water into hydrogen and oxygen — into the DRI process.

In this case, the electrolysis will be powered entirely by wind and solar resources, producing completely renewable hydrogen.

That hydrogen will be used as the reducing gas that strips oxygen from iron ore to form the metallic iron. While there is a DRI plant in Sweden that currently uses renewable hydrogen, its lower-temperature electrolyzer technology is different and less easily integrated into the manufacturing process, according to Brouwer.

And since the only byproduct of the process is water, that water can be used at high temperatures to produce more hydrogen, closing the loop and allowing it to be thermally integrated back into the DRI furnace. Along with its partners, the UCI team will demonstrate that its hydrogen production technology is more efficient and produces lower emissions than current technology.

Additionally, the project will prove that steel can be produced with zero greenhouse gas emissions at a cost comparable to current state-of-the-art technologies. Steam can be fully recycled and utilized to produce more renewable hydrogen and oxygen. The project is a three-year effort that relies on modelling and demonstration of the integrated SOEC and DRI process to achieve a substantial improvement of primary energy saving and CO2 emissions reduction.

It will also explore the synergistic integration between the SOEC-DRI system with other industrial activities that could be partly decarbonized by using the renewable hydrogen and oxygen produced by the SOEC plant.

Electrification of the steel industry and use of pure H2 for iron reduction is considered essential by the International Energy Agency IEA to reach the targets for decarbonization in the steel sector. The use of hydrogen in steel production would eliminate both greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions, whilst ensuring the continuous and reliable production process.