ArcelorMittal Spanish steel plant starts grey hydrogen injections

The injection of coke-oven gas, with high hydrogen content, is an effective and cost-efficient method helping steelmakers to reduce emissions.

ArcelorMittal Asturias completed its coke-oven gas injection project for Blast Furnace B in its Gijón plant, Spain, in February. The project was linked to the use of coke-oven gas, where the company started the injection of grey hydrogen (hydrogen which is recovered from various gases, including natural gas and coke-oven gas) into its blast furnace. The use of this technology is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 125k tonnes annually.

ArcelorMittal Europe has set a target to become carbon neutral by 2050 and reduces its emissions by 30% by 2030. It sets two technological pathways: one route is to use innovative DRI, while the other option is to employ Smart Carbon.

Under the innovative DRI approach, hydrogen can be used for the direct reduction of iron ore (to produce direct reduced iron), which can then be used in both electric arc furnaces and blast furnaces.

The Smart Carbon is a carbon-neutral steel production route that utilises all clean energies such as circular carbon, clean electricity and carbon capture and storage (CCS) in steelmaking. For the time being given that until green hydrogen is commercially viable, the steelmaking process would use circular carbon, which means to allow gases from various sources to be injected into the blast furnace.