Wednesday, April 21, 2021

The lowdown on hydrogen – part 2: production

April 21, 2017 by Roger Arnold

Electrolysis, powered by renewables, is often seen as the ideal way to produce hydrogen. But electrolysis is expensive and not always efficient, writes Roger Arnold. There are other ways that are more efficient and also climate friendly. This is part 2 of a two-part series on hydrogen written by independent energy expert Roger Arnold. Part 1 deals with the uses of hydrogen in transport.

In part 1 last week, I reviewed current status and issues surrounding battery vs. fuel cell electric vehicles. There’s more to be said about that, but not just now. My overall aim here is to explore and clarify — for myself as much as anyone — issues around electricity and hydrogen in a sustainable clean energy economy. In particular, I’d like to understand the significance of the apparent resurgence of interest in fuel cells and the “hydrogen economy”. Toward that end, I think the next order of business is to look at options for hydrogen production. There are new possibilities that I only recently learned about that may prove significant.

What’s wrong with electrolysis?

There are many ways to produce hydrogen. There are only two, however, that are commercially significant in the US and most other nations. One is steam methane reforming (SMR), which starts with natural gas as feedstock. The other is electrolysis of water.

Inputs for electrolysis are just electricity and water. If the electricity is from carbon-free renewable resources, the resulting hydrogen is also carbon-free. That makes electrolysis very attractive to renewable energy advocates. It’s seen as a way to make use of excess power and stabilize the grid when wind and solar resources are making more power than the grid can otherwise absorb.

The larger issue for renewable energy is undersupply, not oversupply

It can certainly do that. And producing hydrogen by electrolysis is more valuable than curtailing power production or dissipating it in a resistor bank when there is truly excess supply. However the larger issue for renewable energy is undersupply, not oversupply. When the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, there’s still demand to be met. There needs to be a way to meet it. If it’s not dispatched fossil fuels, it has to be energy drawn from storage.

Hydrogen does in fact make it feasible to store enough energy to meet demand during lulls. Even extended lulls. The problem is that it’s inherently expensive. That matters, because solutions that cost more don’t get adopted when there are cheaper alternatives available. And dispatching fossil fuel generators is a cheaper alternative that is definitely available.

So why is electrolytic hydrogen inherently expensive? If the electricity driving the electrolysis is surplus, to the point that the alternative to electrolysis is curtailment, the cost of that electricity should be almost nothing. Won’t the hydrogen produced also be very cheap?

Well, it would be, if the capital cost of the electrolysis equipment were negligible, or if renewable energy available for “almost nothing” were common enough to power the equipment at a decent duty cycle. Neither of those conditions applies, however.

The fraction of delivered power that stored hydrogen would need to supply depends strongly on what other resources are online and what level of demand side management has been implemented. In the conceptually appealing but economically worst case scenario of 100% wind and solar, no demand side management, and no super transmission systems, energy from stored hydrogen would represent about three quarters of all kilowatt-hours delivered.

In any system where a substantial fraction of delivered kilowatt-hours must come from storage, the very poor round-trip energy efficiency of power-to-gas-to-power bites hard

That’s of course not very realistic, since even a 100% renewables scenario will include a degree of dispatchable hydroelectric, some demand side management, and a transmission system sufficient to provide partial statistical leveling of wind and solar availability. Even so, with no baseload supply and no resort to dispatched fossil generation, stored hydrogen would need to provide at least a quarter of kilowatt-hours delivered in most cities below 40 degrees latitude. At higher latitudes, seasonal variation in solar availability would raise the figure.

In any system where a substantial fraction of delivered kilowatt-hours must come from storage, the very poor round-trip energy efficiency of power-to-gas-to-power bites hard. 40% is usually taken as the highest round-trip efficiency one could expect for a PEM electrolyzer – fuel cell combination.

If the gas-to-power side employs simple gas combustion turbines rather than fuel cells — as might be the case for generating occasional high power output from a central facility near a gas storage cavern — the round trip efficiency could easily be under 30%. But even at an optimistic 40%, 2.5 kilowatt-hours of input energy would be needed for every kilowatt-hour of energy delivered from storage.

If energy delivered from storage were 25% of energy consumed, then total energy produced would need to increase by three eighths (37.5%) to cover round trip energy losses for that 25%. Renewable energy production at 137.5% of total load would divide as 75% to direct service of load and 62.5% dedicated to hydrogen production for energy storage.

The numbers get rapidly worse if one assumes less than 40% round trip efficiency or greater than 25% of load supplied from stored energy. That doesn’t actually matter to the bottom line, however. The bottom line is that if coping with intermittency of supply in a 100% renewable energy economy were to be based on electrolysis of water, electrolysis would represent by far the largest load on the system. It could not run on “almost free” surplus energy, because there would be none.

The electrolysis load would consume every bit of power output not required by higher priority loads, and still need more. It could go offline at times of shortage, thus avoiding peak charges. But it could never get by on “almost free” surplus power. It would have to pay at the full rate needed to amortize the capital and operating expenses of the renewable energy systems dedicated to feeding it.

Prospects for improvement?

What about prospects for better efficiency in the future? The theoretical potential is always there, but near-term practical prospects look poor. A good part of the inefficiency that besets water electrolyzers and hydrogen fuel cells is “semi-fundamental”. It’s rooted in the substantial overpotential associated with the oxygen evolution reaction (in electrolyzers) and its inverse (in fuel cells).

The overpotential for the oxygen reactions is analogous to the forward voltage drop across a P-N diode junction. At any positive forward bias, the P-N diode junction should theoretically conduct some current. And in fact one can observe that it does — given a sufficiently sensitive lab setup. The current is exponential with voltage, but the knee of the curve doesn’t show up until the forward bias rises above about 0.6 to 0.7 volts.

Historically, the cost of hydrogen from SMR has averaged roughly a quarter to a third of the cost of hydrogen from electrolysis

In a similar manner, an electrolysis cell will evolve tiny amounts of hydrogen and oxygen at any cell voltage above the 1.23 volt equilibrium voltage of water at ambient temperature. But the amounts will be too tiny to notice until the cell voltage rises above about 1.7 volts. Conversely, a hydrogen fuel cell won’t produce a noticeable current against a cell voltage higher than about 0.8 volts.

The required overpotential can be reduced considerably at high temperatures — meaning in this case upwards of 500 ℃. “Steam electrolysis”, a cousin to solid oxide fuel cell technology, has long been of interest as a more efficient way to split water. But it’s never been successfully commercialized. The problem has been poor durability of the ceramic electrolyte in a hot hydrogen environment. I’ve seen no indications of that being about to change.

Steam methane reforming

If hydrogen can’t be produced cheaply by electrolysis in quantities large enough to be useful for grid-scale energy storage — much less for a major transportation fuel — what about other production methods? What about steam methane reforming?

The cost of hydrogen from SMR is linked to the cost of natural gas. But so, increasingly, is the cost of electricity. Historically, the cost of hydrogen from SMR has averaged roughly a quarter to a third of the cost of hydrogen from electrolysis. That’s in line with what one might expect, given that it takes nearly three units of natural gas, on average, to produce one unit of electricity, while the energy efficiency of electricity to hydrogen is worse than that of natural gas to hydrogen.

With that much of a cost difference, it’s no surprise that SMR supplies 95% of the market for hydrogen used in oil refining and other industries. Hydrogen from electrolysis is only used when the quantities needed are small or the purity requirements exceptionally high.

The downside of hydrogen from SMR is that natural gas is a fossil fuel, and the prevailing methods of implementing SMR vent fossil carbon into the atmosphere. That’s because the primary reaction:

CH₄ + H₂O + heat ⇌ CO + 3H₂

is strongly endothermic; it requires heat to drive it forward. That heat is usually supplied by burning some of the natural gas, producing CO₂. The CO in the output stream from the primary reaction is usually also converted to CO₂ via the water gas shift reaction:

CO + H₂O ⇌ CO₂ + H₂ + heat

There are many ways to engineer the reaction train for SMR. In most cases a waste stream of CO₂ and N₂ (from the air used in burning some of the gas) is produced. The mixture is usually vented. However, in situations where a pure CO₂ stream has value, it can be arranged at little added cost. Either the CO₂ can be separated out, or the reaction train can be engineered so that atmospheric N₂ never enters the gas flow in the first place.

There is an existing market for CO₂ that is already fairly large. If it develops as many expect over the next few decades, it will be large enough to absorb the CO₂ supply from even large scale production of hydrogen by SMR

A good technical presentation from the Colorado School of Mines covers several variations for SMR trains. It’s not exhaustive; there are significant variations that it doesn’t cover, including a new one recently announced that promises to make clean SMR with a pure CO₂ waste stream practical at the scale of a hydrogen refueling station. The capital cost would be low. The station would need to be located near a CO₂ pipeline to facilitate disposal of the CO₂, but that’s not impossible.

The low cost of producing hydrogen from natural gas, along with the relative ease of producing a “pipeline ready” CO₂ waste stream, mean that carbon-free hydrogen could in fact be supplied to fuel cell vehicles at a cost below the equivalent amount of gasoline.

Disposal of CO₂

If we should use SMR to produce cheap hydrogen for FCVs, how will we dispose of the CO₂? And how will disposal affect the cost of the hydrogen produced? It’s a non-trivial question.

Given the slow turnover rate in the automotive vehicle fleet, it can take a decade or two for even the most favorable new technologies to permeate the fleet. In view of that, the amount of CO₂ associated with hydrogen production for FCVs is unlikely to become significant any time soon. There are commercial uses for small quantities of CO₂ that are not controversial. That market is probably large enough to absorb the supply of CO₂ from hydrogen production for the automotive market for at least the next ten years. Beyond that — and especially if hydrogen is adopted for backing renewables on the electricity grid — larger markets for CO₂ will have to be tapped.

There is an existing market for CO₂ that is already fairly large. If it develops as many expect over the next few decades, it will be large enough to absorb the CO₂ supply from even large scale production of hydrogen by SMR. But it’s not without controversy. It’s the market for CO₂ based Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).

CO₂ based EOR involves pumping of compressed CO₂ through injection wells to an oil-bearing formation. It restores pressure in the formation and forces remaining oil toward production wells. It also mixes with the oil, expanding its volume and reducing its viscosity. That enables it to flow more easily through the porous rock of the oil reservoir. As explained in this document from the Global CCS Institute, injection of CO₂ into mature oil fields is increasingly considered the most effective method available to revive output and keep the fields producing.

With the oil age drawing to a necessary close, it makes sense to capitalize on the desire of incumbent producers to maintain their positions for as long as demand holds. By getting the most out of old wells, we can undercut the market for new wells

The controversy around CO₂ based EOR is at multiple levels. It recovers oil from mature fields that would not otherwise be recoverable. Many object to it on that basis alone. They feel that oil should be left in the ground, and that any technology that allows more of it to be recovered must to opposed. But that position rests on an implicit assumption that we will ultimately burn all the oil that is recoverable, and that technology to increase what can be recovered will increase what will be released into the atmosphere.

If we expect to leave a habitable world for future generations, we will have to stop well short of burning all the oil that is recoverable. But in that case, it doesn’t ultimately matter if technology makes more of the oil from mature oil fields recoverable. That only affects who will produce whatever oil we end up burning, and where it will be produced. We’ll stop before it’s all gone, because we have to.

In that case, with the oil age drawing to a necessary close, it makes sense to capitalize on the desire of incumbent producers to maintain their positions for as long as demand holds. By getting the most out of old wells, we can undercut the market for new wells while disposing of large amounts of CO₂ in the bargain.

Other objections to CO₂ based EOR have to do variously with doubts about safety, duration of sequestration, and economic viability. Those are large topics, and I won’t try to address them in any detail in this post. However, CO₂ based EOR is not a new thing, and oil and gas industry has decades of experience with it on which to draw.

In fact, there are already some 3600 miles of pipeline in North America for transporting CO₂ from various sources to EOR sites. The map below, from an NETL review of CO₂ pipeline infrastructure in the US, shows the pipelines and CO₂ sources as of 2014, and the oil field regions served.

Notably absent are the oil fields of Kern County and southern California. The nature of those fields makes them good candidates for CO₂ EOR, but there is no large natural CO₂ source nearby that would make a pipeline network to the fields attractive to investors. There are certainly many industrial facilities that could be equipped for carbon capture. If a CO₂ pipeline ran near them, they could connect to it and profit from sale of their captured CO₂. However, none has been large enough to anchor construction of a pipeline. So it hasn’t happened.

Byproduct carbon black from methane cracking could become the ultimate stored energy resource. Stores of terawatt-hours of energy could easily be accumulated

It’s possible that the State of California, if it came to see SMR with carbon capture as the most practical route to success of zero-emission hydrogen FCVs, might do something about that. It could offer loan guarantees for construction of the pipeline, along with the SMR plants that would feed it. Disposal of CO₂ would then reduce, not increase, the cost of hydrogen fueling stations that the state wants to see. If I were an executive at Toyota, Honda, or Hyundai, I’d be enrolling oil field operators and directing lobbyists in Sacramento to promote that idea.

Beyond SMR

There might be another way to produce hydrogen from natural gas that would obviate the need for disposal of CO₂. That’s by cracking methane (and other volatile hydrocarbons in natural gas) to produce pure carbon and hydrogen. It’s a high temperature reaction that is very familiar to chemical engineers. It’s even used commercially to produce carbon black for use in tires and other rubber products. But the method used to drive the reaction has been a plasma arc. That approach is extremely energy intensive.

A few research groups have been exploring other approaches that would be much more efficient. The most promising alternative may be one that was reported in the cover article in an August 2016 issue of New Scientist. It was dramatically titled “The Reaction that Will Change the World”. It involves bubbling natural gas through molten tin at ~1000 ℃. Carbon from the natural gas splits from its hydrogen atoms and dissolves into the tin. The orphaned hydrogen bubbles to the top of the pool, where it’s separated from any unreacted methane through a hydrogen permeable membrane. The unreacted methane is recycled. The dissolved carbon, meanwhile, precipitates as microparticles of carbon black that migrate to the surface of the pool. Accumulated carbon black can be scraped from pool of tin in the same manner as slag from a pool of molten steel.

The process only produces half as much hydrogen per unit of natural gas as SMR, but it does so with high energy efficiency. There is no CO₂ needing to be transported by pipeline and pumped into geological storage reservoirs far underground. The waste stream is fine carbon black that has many potential uses. High value uses would be in water and air filters (in place of activated charcoal) and as filler material in tires and in rubber and plastic products.

It does seem to me that the idea of clean hydrogen from chemical processing of fossil fuels offers game-changing potential

If implemented to supply hydrogen on a large scale, the amount of byproduct carbon black produced from cracking methane would saturate the high use value markets. The rest might be sold as a soil amendment with properties similar to biochar — although its efficacy for that would need to be proven. However, there’s another scalable use that might be feasible: it might be used to fuel flexible power generation from direct carbon fuel cells.

Direct carbon fuel cells of various designs have been demonstrated, and there are ongoing efforts to commercialize them. Some approaches have shown efficiencies as high as 80% for electricity out to chemical potential energy in. But efforts have almost all been funded by DOE as part of its “clean coal” initiative. They’ve accordingly been directed at making the cells work using powdered coal as fuel. The impurities in coal have made that difficult. It’s possible that with a highly pure form of carbon black as fuel, commercial feasibility would be much easier to reach. If so, byproduct carbon black from methane cracking could become the ultimate stored energy resource. Stores of terawatt-hours of energy could easily be accumulated.

Of course, actually using carbon black as fuel for direct carbon fuel cells (DCFC) reintroduces the sequestration issue for the resulting CO₂ waste. But it’s a pure CO₂ waste stream, and the ease of transporting bulk carbon black means that the DCFC plants could be located close to CO₂ injection sites. If the DCFC approach works, it would be a way of shortcutting the CO₂ pipeline infrastructure problem.

Backing renewables

Regardless of whether methane cracking and possibly the DCFC approach to massive stored energy work out, it does seem to me that the idea of clean hydrogen from chemical processing of fossil fuels offers game-changing potential. The carbon or CO₂ waste streams can be sequestered at little cost — or negative cost in the case of CO₂ sold for EOR. That means that the hydrogen produced can truly be zero carbon, even before the power grid is decarbonized.

Most compelling, to me, is that $53 per kilowatt figure I mentioned last week as DOE’s estimate for the current system cost for PEM fuel cell stacks (in volume production). I’ve long held that the biggest problem with intermittent renewables is their effect on backing supplies. Under high penetration scenarios, backing supplies see short operating periods, fast ramp rates, and low overall duty cycles. That forces utilities to resort to the cheapest units they have to fill the role. Those are mostly simple combustion turbines that have high carbon emissions. However, $53 per kilowatt is even cheaper than simple combustion turbines. And PEM fuel cell stacks don’t care about operating periods or ramp rates. Their thermal efficiency compares to the best CCGTs, and doesn’t suffer from operation at partial capacity. They’re ideal!

The only problem is supplying them with enough hydrogen fuel. Electrolysis, as already noted, is too inefficient and too expensive. But when surplus RE is used to drive the endothermic SMR or methane cracking reactions, it yields more than a factor of ten more hydrogen than it would by electrolysis. One still has zero carbon fuel being made from cheap “as available” power, and thus the benefit of a “virtual battery” via control of power directed to the process. However, the degree of excess RE capacity needed to supply the fuel is drastically reduced.

I can imagine a whole host of issues and objections that are likely to be raised in response to my conclusion. Rather than trying to anticipate and address them all here, I think I’ll let them play out in the comments. Perhaps I’ll end up posting a subsequent column on the political and environmental issues around “zero carbon hydrogen” from fossil fuels. It will be a hot topic.

Editor’s note

Roger Arnold, systems architect at Silverthorn Engineering, is a former software engineer. He studied physics, math, and chemistry at Michigan State University’s Honors College , where he graduated in 1967. A US Army veteran (courtesy of the Viet Nam era draft), he later did graduate work in computer architectures and operating systems at the University of Colorado. Over the years, he has worked variously for IBM, Boeing Aerospace, AT&T, and about a dozen smaller companies and startups. Since retiring from professional life as a processor architect, he has refocused on clean energy technologies, energy efficiency, and space systems. His favorite activities are currently technical writing and mentoring early stage startups.

This article was first published on Energy Post’s sister publication The Energy Collective and is republished here with permission from the author.

Spanish Researchers Claim a Green Hydrogen Breakthrough

NOV 2020
Eric Worrall

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Researchers in Spain claim their breakthrough cuts the cost of electrolysis cells, by replacing the traditional arrangement of layered electrode plates with a much simpler electrochemical system.

H2? Oh! New water-splitting technique pushes progress of green hydrogen
It’s really dope. Yep it’s an energy-efficient process kicked off by gadolinium-doped cerium dioxide
Lindsay Clark Tue 3 Nov 2020
Researchers in Spain have uncovered a new approach to producing hydrogen via water splitting which could help overcome some of the drawbacks to this promising alternative fuel source.
In a study published in Nature Energy, Valencia University researcher José Manuel Serra, professor José M Catalá-Civera, and their colleagues describe a method for producing hydrogen gas by blasting microwave radiation at a watery chemical soup. The approach could make extracting hydrogen from water cheaper, and more importantly, reduce the capital costs of the necessary machinery.
…
The cyclical process proposed by the research team uses a soup of gadolinium-doped cerium oxide and water. Applying microwaves to the mixture electrochemically deoxygenates the cerium oxide, but when the microwaves stop, there’s a reaction with the water, and the cerium re-oxygenates and produces free hydrogen.
…The abstract of the study;
Hydrogen production via microwave-induced water splitting at low temperature
J. M. Serra, J. F. Borrás-Morell, B. García-Baños, M. Balaguer, P. Plaza-González, J. Santos-Blasco, D. Catalán-Martínez, L. Navarrete & J. M. Catalá-Civera
Supplying global energy demand with CO2-free technologies is becoming feasible thanks to the rising affordability of renewable resources. Hydrogen is a promising vector in the decarbonization of energy systems, but more efficient and scalable synthesis is required to enable its widespread deployment. Here we report contactless H2 production via water electrolysis mediated by the microwave-triggered redox activation of solid-state ionic materials at low temperatures (<250 °C). Water was reduced via reaction with non-equilibrium gadolinium-doped CeO2 that was previously in situ electrochemically deoxygenated by the sole application of microwaves. The microwave-driven reduction was identified by an instantaneous electrical conductivity rise and O2 release. This process was cyclable, whereas H2 yield and energy efficiency were material- and power-dependent. Deoxygenation of low-energy molecules (H2O or CO2) led to the formation of energy carriers and enabled CH4 production when integrated with a Sabatier reactor. This method could be extended to other reactions such as intensified hydrocarbons synthesis or oxidation.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00720-6
Cerium is a rare earth mineral, mostly extracted in China. The current world price for Cerium Oxide is around $1800 / ton, though this could rise if everyone suddenly needs Cerium for their green revolution hydrogen electrodes. Having said that, Cerium is the 26th most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, more abundant than lead, so in principle there is plenty of Cerium available to extract if demand rises.
It will be interesting to see how well this process scales out of the lab. The most common problem with catalytic processes like this is impurities in the water poisoning the catalyst. As water is electrolysed, it would tend to leave behind and concentrate any unwanted contaminants in the Cerium Oxide.
For example if some of the Cerium catalyst came in contact with sulphur instead of oxygen during the hydrogen production phase, because the water being electrolysed was contaminated with a small amount of sulphur, the resulting Cerium sulphide ceramic might be durable enough to survive the microwave regeneration phase.

Despite the potential cost saving of this new catalyst, the green hydrogen produced by this generator is still very expensive, because of the cost of the renewable energy which is required to fuel the process.

Sweden early to adopt hydrogen pathway to net-zero steel

image credit: Rethink Research

Oct 14, 2020
Decarbonized steel, produced using green hydrogen, is taking steps towards commercialization. This week Vattenfall was granted €2 million by the Swedish Energy Agency to scale up testing of its Hybrit development, which will allow a comprehensive feasibility study around plant design, choice of technology and logistics across the steel value chain. This funding significantly bolsters the Hybrit project’s ambition to produce some of the world’s first carbon-free steel by 2024.

Hybrit is a collaboration between mining company LKAB, steelmakers SSAB and power company Vattenfall, with the objective of replacing coking coal with green hydrogen in the steelmaking process, making the full process completely fossil-fuel free by the middle of the decade, and pushing for commercialization by 2035. Operating in Scandinavia, the group’s stated objective is to reduce Sweden’s total CO2 emissions by 10% and Finland’s by 7%.

The venture currently has three projects underway: one for the production of fossil free iron ore pellets using biofuels in both Malmerget and Lulea in Sweden, one for hydrogen storage, and one for the use of hydrogen in the direct reduction of iron (DRI). With the injection of new funding, the group will now start testing up towards industrial scale, with plans to break ground in 2023 and to start operations in 2025, in a demonstration of full-scale production with a capacity of just over one million tons of iron a year.

Through the Hybit process, iron ore pellets are reduced by hydrogen gas in a direct reduction process (DRI). This occurs at a lower temperature than in a blast furnace, and produces an intermediate product, sponge iron, with water vapor as a primary waste product which may be used to recover hydrogen fuel through electrolysis. The sponge iron can be used either to produce hot briquetted iron to be shipped elsewhere or melted immediately in an electric arc furnace (EAF) together with scrap steel. If powered by renewable electricity, this has the potential to remove over 95% of steelmaking emissions.

The further benefit of this is that it is agnostic as to whether scrap steel or iron ore is used as the feedstock. As the global stock of steel increases, so does the potential for a circular economy. By 2050, reduced losses, contamination and downcycling will mean that the availability of steel scrap in Europe could account for three-quarters of demand.

The global steel industry is responsible for between 7% and 9% of global emissions. While demand has dropped 6.4% through a stunted 2019, urbanization in developing economies, largely in Asia, is driving an increase of around 1.4% per year. Without new technologies, global steel demand is set to rise from 1.6 billion tons today, to 2.0 billion tons by 2035 and up to 2.8 billion tones by 2050. While some of the emissions from growth in demand will be offset by a three-fold increase in steel recycling, new steel production will have to increase to meet this.

Steelmaking, however, is often dubbed as one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize. Reducing processed iron ore to produce steel in a blast oxygen furnace (BOF), which accounts for the 90% of steelmaking emissions (both CO and CO2), requires temperatures of around 1,200 degrees Celsius. Low carbon options to generate heat at this temperature are limited; electrification of heat can only really be used for low temperature applications, and once you get to around 400 degrees Celsius both cost and technical barriers start to arise, as circuit components need to handle higher operating temperatures.

So, the race to decarbonize is on, with pressure building to not only save the planet, but to save the future of the companies that have become entrenched in steel production using fossil fuels. Naturally, this is happening across the steelmaking industry, not just at Hybrit, and we’re seeing various approaches similar to those in other hard-to-decarbonize sectors.

The first, and arguably least effective, is an incremental approach using efficiency gains within the technology. Since 1960, these gains have amounted to reductions of 60% in the energy consumer per ton of crude steel production, although largely not in the emission-intensive blast oxygen furnace, so CO2 intensity has only fallen by around 15%. While these improvements are not to be sniffed at, they are largely economically driven, and will not represent the future of steelmaking. The reduction in energy intensity pretty much plateaued in the early noughties, and if we’ve learned anything from how Tesla has taken the automotive sector by storm, it is the revolutionary approach, not the evolutionary approach, that will transform industries through the energy transition.

This is the same argument that can be used in dispelling carbon capture or biofuels from the long-term future of steel. While it is estimated that BOF plus carbon capture and storage will be able to reduce the CO2 intensity of steel production by around 50%, this technology has had limited success so far. Some plants now have technology that has allowed it to capture and sell CO2 to nearby gas facilities, but the figure of 50,000 tons that some companies quote, only accounts for around 5% of total CO2 emissions. Hybrit explored CCS in its early days, but found that the best-case scenario entails just a 50% capture rate.

Similarly, biofuels are only replacing small amounts of coal in the BOFs where it is used, and an increase in its use for steelmaking may undermine the need for biofuel elsewhere, especially when considering the vast amount of land Europe would need to dedicate to it just for current biomass plans, which do not yet include steelmaking. Again, this is another concept that was explored by Hybrit, ended by the possible toll on Sweden’s forestry.

The largest alternative source of steel production is direct reduction (DRI), using natural gas as a fuel, which can also cut CO2 intensity in half. But there are two problems here again: emissions are still fairly high, so if demand doubles then the absolute emissions will remain the same; and the cost of natural gas is still high in most parts of the world where steelmaking is a booming industry. DRI only accounts for 5% of global production, despite being a mature technology.

Essentially, the problem with all the above is that they can never be truly net zero in terms of emissions, while hydrogen can. The rate of penetration is therefore dependent on the technical performance of the product as well as the price at which it enters the market.

The major change in the Hybrit production process is replacing the traditional iron-making process. The downstream steel product’s quality should remain unchanged.

In early stages, however, the cost of fossil-free steel will be higher. SSAB believes that this will not impact early development significantly, with several customers content with paying a premium for a carbon-free product in their supply chain, especially as corporate pledges to reach net zero emission start to ramp up.

Factors like the price of electricity, coking coal and carbon dioxide emissions are key to determining the timeframe in which carbon-free steel becomes competitive. Even at present, Hybrit indicates that it may not be far off. Based on current commodity prices, it indicates that its process is only 20% to 30% higher than its fossil fuel counterpart. Capital costs will decrease as an element of economies of scale comes into play, electricity prices will fall as the cost of renewables continues to plummet, and coal and gas prices will increase with carbon taxes. With carbon pricing in Europe expected to reach $100 per ton by 2030, this tipping point is likely to occur in the back end of this decade, during Hybrit’s demonstration phase, and far before it pushes for commercial plants in 2035. Early models suggest that this breakeven will occur at carbon pricing between €34 and €68 per ton and a cost of electricity of €40 per MWh.

The largest issues faced by the process are developing an effective process to use 100% green hydrogen in this timeframe, and using this hydrogen in an energy efficient way so that it’s economically viable against other hydrogen applications. At full production in Sweden, Hybrit would also use around 10% of Sweden’s current electricity supply, so its success also depends on a continued buildout of renewable energy sources in the country – although the 2035 timescale gives more than enough time for this to materialize.

Hybrit is one of the only ventures exploring a full decarbonization approach to steelmaking, making SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall strong contenders to dominate the industry when the technology becomes cost competitive, allowing the companies to decimate their carbon footprint.

Other projects for very low and zero emission iron and steel include:

SALCOS, a collaboration between Salzgitter and the Fraunhofer Institute, aiming to directly replace 30% of natural gas with hydrogen in the DRI process.

Siderwin, an EU funded Uclos project ran by ArcelorMittal, using electrowinning to directly extract iron from its ore.

Boston Metal’s electrowinning process to develop a range of metals from their ore using molten oxide electrolysis.

Thyssenkrupp’s exploits to substitute hydrogen for coke in the process heat and reduction across a range of industrial processes.

The last of these is arguably one of Hybrit’s closest competitors. As part of the Course 50 initiative in Japan, Thyssenkrupp is already piloting its technology, and plans to demonstrate 50 full-scale plants, which also use CCS, in the 2030s. The company is currently exploring both CCS technologies and injected hydrogen into the BOF during production, while working on an incremental approach to developing steel plants similar to those being developed by Hybrit on a similar timeframe. It expects its first carbon neutral steel to be produced in 2022 at its Duisburg plant in Germany, having partnered with RWE back in June.

Other research is ongoing in pretty much all markets. In February for example, universities in Leeds and Sheffield secured £1.26 million to investigate ways of decarbonizing the UK’s steel industry.

But in industry, while all major European players are testing hydrogen-based approaches, Thyssenkrupp and the players involved in the Hybrit project are among few who have identified and acted upon the humiliation that the steel industry will face if it prevents nations from reaching net zero targets. These companies will be best placed to avoid consolidation through the energy transition, especially if innovative market entrants can form off the back of projects like Siderwin and gobble up market share.

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Hydrogen for steel production: myth or reality?

Posted on 8 April 2019 in Alcim's articles by Alcimed.

The energetic properties of the hydrogen molecule are mainly known in the automotive industry for their use in fuel cells. But a much less widespread and equally promising application is the use of hydrogen in industrial processes, particularly in the steel industry, as a substitute for natural gas or other carbon fuels. Alcimed, a consulting company specializing in innovation and the development of new markets, is studying the potential of hydrogen in the steel industry and reviewing the current industrial approaches in this field.

The energy efficiency of very high-temperature combustion processes is a key issue for a number of sectors including metallurgy, cement or papermaking. Since the industrial revolution, manufacturers have been using fossil fuels, initially solid ones with coal, gradually increasing the share of liquid and gaseous fuels with the development of oil and gas fields.

The world steel industry is one of the last major coal-consuming industries in the world. Although the share of recyclable steel produced in electric steel mills is increasing significantly year after year, it remains a minority compared to the production of steel from ores in blast furnaces in which the use of coal is structurally necessary. Other alternative solutions are being developed, such as the production of pre-reduced iron (better known as DRI – Direct Reduced Iron) that does not require coal. The use of hydrogen to complement or replace conventional fuels in both blast furnaces and DRI production is currently the subject of many studies and pilot projects.

Hydrogen as a reducing agent in blast furnaces

Steel production is based on two distinct reactions, both of which require a supply of energy in the form of heat: firstly, ore reduction (the purification of iron by separating it from the oxygen atoms), and then its fusion (the transition from a solid to a liquid state).

In a blast furnace, the reduction and melting of the ore are carried out successively in the same chamber. The presence of coal is structurally essential and its oxidation is sufficient to ensure the fusion of purified iron. The melting reaction produces gases (Carbon Monoxide CO and Hydrogen H2), which rise inside the furnace to act on the ores upstream of the process, reducing them. Therefore, in a blast furnace, hydrogen may only be used to reduce the ore. It is present as hot gas but is never really burned. As it is already inherently present in the enclosure, the use of hydrogen as a reducing agent in blast furnaces is already well known in the industry. The forced injection of additional hydrogen into the enclosure is also the subject of further studies, thus showing the interest manufacturers may have in such solutions.

Several research programs, such as the European ULCOS or the Japanese COURSE 50 projects, have focused on improving the performance of blast furnaces to reduce CO2 emissions. As part of these initiatives, alternative blast furnace configurations, which collect, treat and reuse the exhaust gases as reducing agents in the process, have been developed. Although research on the use of hydrogen in these installations is being conducted, showing a growing interest in the subject, up till now, few industrial approaches have been identified.

DRI production: an application with a high potential

Unlike in blast furnaces, DRI production consists of the simple reduction of the metal. This operation only requires the use of hot reducing gases, such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen, or a mixture of both. Over the past 40 years, low natural gas prices have favored DRI production, which has grown faster than steel production.

The use of hydrogen for the production of DRI is being studied in many industrial initiatives. The American company MIDREX, responsible for nearly 60% of the world’s annual DRI production, uses a process based on syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. However, the syngas is produced through by reforming natural gas. On the other hand, the Austrian company Voestalpine, also producing pre-reduced iron from syngas, has obtained approval to build the world’s largest green hydrogen production plant in Linz, Austria. This electrolysis facility will produce decarbonated hydrogen using only water and electricity from renewable sources.

But the Swedish company Hybrit is probably going the furthest in developing the hydrogen sector for DRI production. In fact, it is currently conducting a pilot project with hydrogen as the only reducing gas. The pilot phase will be completed in 2025 followed by tests on demonstration facilities between 2025 and 2035. According to Hybrit, the industrial-scale plant will require a 1 GW electrolysis system.

Jakub RAMS, manager in the Energy, Environment and Mobility Business Unit at Alcimed, admits however, that: “The technical and ecological argument behind hydrogen cannot be sufficient in the face of the economic aspect, which is crucial for manufacturers; its cost, even including the impact of carbon taxes, is still far from making the molecule competitive.”

Production and transport: the technical and economic constraints to be overcome

Two production scenarios are currently conceivable: centralized production by energy producers and suppliers, or decentralized production in the steel plants themselves. In both cases, the implementation would require the development of technically, economically and ecologically viable production methods and/or transportation routes.

Currently, 96% of industrial hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels (natural gas, oil, coal, etc.). With only 4% of the production carried out through electrolysis, it is clear that only a minimal part of the hydrogen produced worldwide is carbon-free, that also depending on the source of the electricity used in the process. As the purpose of using hydrogen is to decarbonize the production process, its origin is crucial. The implementation of an industrial-scale electrolysis installation currently represents a considerable investment, over €1 billion for a 200MW installation. The rise of renewable energies and the search for storage solutions for the surplus electricity produced by these sources are driving the development of electrolysis solutions for the production of hydrogen.

A hydrogen transmission network, such as the one in place for natural gas, does not exist yet. This represents a major constraint for steel manufacturers who do not have the possibility to produce decarbonated hydrogen themselves.

However, from a technical point of view, the development of a hydrogen transport network is not a utopia. For example, the GRHYD project, coordinated by ENGIE in the urban community of Dunkirk, consists in transforming the surplus electricity produced by wind turbines or solar panels into hydrogen and injecting it into the natural gas network at contents varying between 0% and 20%. The two-year project, which began in June 2018, will enable researchers to estimate the long-term efficiency of electrolyzers, refine grid injection techniques and analyze the behavior of boilers and bus engines.

Jakub Rams adds, “The development of economically and ecologically viable production and transport solutions are the first steps in the development of a global hydrogen supply chain for the industry at large. Metallurgy, brickworks, glass works, and cement works are all industries that are currently considering the nature of the fuels they use, for which hydrogen could one day represent an alternative.”

Will Sweden lead the way in hydrogen-powered steelmaking?

Boasting a sea port, an ore mine and lots of renewable energy, northern Sweden is an ideal location for producing hydrogen-powered steel. But there's no lack of challenges to tackle.

The mining town of Kiruna in northern Sweden has big plans

Lulea in northern Sweden is only about 100 kilometers (62 miles) away from the Arctic Circle. It has some 80,000 inhabitants, almost one-third of all people living in Norrbotten province.

In winter, you need icebreakers to access the port of Lulea. It's the second-biggest port on Sweden's eastern coast after Stockholm.

The port of Lulea predominantly handles coal, steel and ore iron. It's located on one end of the Scandinavian ore railroad track, with Narvik in Norway being on the on the opposite end. In between there's Lapland with its mining town Kiruna and an eponymous mine that is considered to be the world's most productive ore mine. In Lulea, steel is produced from Kiruna ore with the help of coal coming from across the Baltic Sea.

Steelmaking reinvented

But this way of making steel will soon come to an end as Sweden's steel industry aims to emulate national power utilities that have done completely without coal for almost a year now.

CO2 emissions from steelmaking will have to be reduced drastically in Sweden and elsewhere if the world wants to meet its emissions targets. Crude steel production accounted for 5.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), some 75% of all energy consumed in the process was generated from using coal.

According to mining company LKAB, Kiruna mines enough iron ore for six Eiffel towers per day

Water vapor instead of carbon dioxide?

But as in cement production, emissions from steelmaking cannot simply be reduced by using electricity from renewables. This is because carbon from coal binds oxygen which is necessary to make crude steel and later steel from iron ore. Carbon and oxygen together result in carbon dioxide.

Steelworkers have begun to develop new techniques enabling them to free the oxygen from iron ore with the help of hydrogen instead of carbon. This way you get water vapor as a waste gas, rather than carbon dioxide.

A number of companies are currently testing such techniques, including Thyssenkrupp and Salzgitter from Germany. Lulea in Sweden, however, is willing to take the lead in producing steel with the help of hydrogen.
Swedish pioneers and German partners

Sweden's SSAB is among the technology leaders in this field. Together with iron ore producer LKAB from Kiruna and power utility Vattenfall, SSAB launched the HYBRIT project in its Lulea plant. In September of last year, a test facility went operational there that started making steel without using coal.

Stockholm-based Vargas Holding, which is behind battery producer Northvolt, is also willing to make CO2-free steel in the region. The resulting consortium, H2 Green Steel, involves Swedish utility vehicle manufacturer Scania as well as German-based steelmaker Bilstein and plant manufacturer SMS Group, also from Germany.

The HYBRIT pilot plant is all about making fossil-free steel

First major project of its kind globally

H2 Green Steel wants to build the first global mass production plant for emissions-free steel. An entire production facility including a hydrogen production unit is to emerge in the town of Boden.

By 2026, the plant is to produce 2.5 million tons of hydrogen-powered steel annually, and 5 million tons from 2030. To put those figures in perspective: Germany makes some 40 million tons of steel per year.

The Boden plant is to produce hydrogen from water for which H2 Green Steel wants to build an 800-megawatt electrolyzer on the ground.
Large quantities of green electricity needed

The 800 megawatt mentioned above would currently be 2% of Sweden's total annual electricity consumption. On top of that, you need energy for the steelmaking process itself. During a recent online presentation of the project, H2 Chief Project Officer Maria Persson Gulda said that energy efficiency was key.

But the need to heat up the steel to over 1,000 degrees Centigrade (1832 degrees Fahrenheit) will require enormous amounts of energy no matter what. Part of the waste heat will be fed into the regional heating grid. The question remains where the required green electricity will come from. Without it, hydrogen-powered steelmaking would not be emissions-free.

Norrbotten abounds in hydroelectric power stations

Northern Sweden an ideal location?

Choosing the right location for such a project is crucial. In Norrbotten province alone, Vattenfall operates 15 hydroelectric power plants. Some 100 kilometers to the south, a group of companies is building the Markbydgen windfarm, which is to become Europe's largest onshore windfarm.

Together, both sources of energy would be in a position to come up with 25 terawatt-hours of renewable energy, almost one-fifth of Sweden's current total energy generation.

But there is even more going for Lulea and Boden. "The region really is Sweden's mining and metalworking mecca," H2 supervisory board member Harald Mix said during the online presentation, adding that this also meant being able to draw on the big expertise of employees.

This article was adapted from German.

How hydrogen could change the face of steel production as we know it

2019-05-29

Climate protection Research and Development Sector coupling

How hydrogen could change the face of steel production as we know it

In order to reduce its emissions, the steel industry needs technical innovation.

Sweden has one possible solution

The EU is taking climate protection very seriously. Both increasingly stricter environment and climate protection regulations and rising costs through emissions trading are turning up the heat for the industry. By 2030, greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union are to be reduced by at least 40 percent compared the corresponding levels from 1990. By 2050, they are to be cut by as much as 80 to 95 percent.

This affects the steel industry in particular, given that it is considered to be one of the main industrial sources of the climate-damaging gas carbon dioxide. As a result, European steel producing companies are trying to fundamentally change their manufacturing processes through a number of pilot projects and test facilities in order to reduce these unwanted emissions.

‘Hybrit’ – a game-changer for the traditional production process

The joint endeavours of a project of three Swedish companies, the steel group SSAB, the mining group LKAB and the energy group Vattenfall, are already coming along swimmingly. ‘Hybrit’, short for ‘Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology’, is set to produce zero carbon steel from 2020 onwards. At a plant in Luleå in northern Sweden, the conventional production method is being given a dramatic facelift.

The production of pig iron, which is later made into crude steel, uses iron ore as a basic material together with what is referred to as a reducing agent, which removes oxygen from the iron ore. Traditional pig iron manufacturing processes usually use coke as a reducing agent. However, in doing so carbon and oxygen produce the climate-damaging gas carbon dioxide.

Video explaining the function of Hybrit

The aforementioned new production process uses hydrogen instead of coke, which also reacts with the oxygen in the iron ore, but the result is water vapour rather than carbon dioxide. The hydrogen itself is produced climate-neutrally with electricity from renewables. As such, the process could ultimately produce genuinely ‘green steel’.
Hydrogen process to drastically reduce emissions

The Swedish Energy Agency has calculated that this process could reduce the CO2 emissions of the entire country by up to ten percent. It is supporting the development of the plant, which is costing around 150 million euros, with a subsidy of 50 million euros – according to the agency, this is the largest amount of funding ever allocated.

Initially, Hybrit will only produce a comparatively modest amount of one metric ton of steel per hour. Moving forward, however, production is to be expanded to churn out the usual industrial quantities of around 100 to 200 times this figure. According to the feasibility study, the associated costs are currently still 20 to 30 percent higher than those of the traditional process, mainly because hydrogen production is complex and energy-intensive. However, according to Mårten Görnerup, who heads up the project, this price tag should also become competitive by 2035. He bases this forecast on the fact that emission certificates will become significantly more expensive in coming years, while renewable energy will be available at increasingly affordable prices.

Difference between conventional steelmaking and the new Hybrit process: The Hybrit process uses hydrogen instead of coke, which produces no CO2 but only water (Source: Hybrit).

Difference between conventional steelmaking and the new Hybrit process: The Hybrit process uses hydrogen instead of coke, which produces no CO2 but only water (Source: Hybrit).

Difference between conventional steelmaking and the new Hybrit process: The Hybrit process uses hydrogen instead of coke, which produces no CO2 but only water (Source: Hybrit).

Blast furnaces in Duisburg to be extinguished by 2050

In Duisburg, things aren’t quite as far along as in Sweden. Thyssen Krupp Steel has created a ‘Roadmap for hydrogen-based steel production’, as Andreas Goss, Head of the Steel Division, explained to Handelsblatt earlier this year. All blast furnaces at the Duisburg-Bruckhausen site will have been extinguished by 2050 at the latest. Before then, the group plans on investing ten billion euros in the development of processes for zero carbon steel production.

Special reduction facilities, rather than blast furnaces, will be needed for the hydrogen process. This is why Thyssen Krupp is planning on slowly upgrading or replacing existing facilities with new ones. The company is still in the process of looking into things, and Dr. Arnd Köfler, head of production, sees “many unanswered questions” in the supply of hydrogen.

New blast furnace replaces coking plants

In the Netherlands, Tata Steel Europe, Europe’s second-largest steel producer, is testing another way to reduce emissions from steel production. According to the group, the production of one metric ton of steel at the Ijmuiden plant currently creates 1.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide. This is significantly less than other plants (which emit around 4 metric tons of CO2), but is also very close to the absolute baseline of what can be achieved with current production process.

The group considers the opportunities in this area to be exhausted – significant reductions are only possible through the development of “groundbreaking new technologies”. One such technology could be what is known as the Hisarna process. Back in 2010, a plant based on this process was built at the Ijmuiden steelworks to the tune of 20 million euros. Since then, millions more have been invested and a number of test runs have been carried out.

A state-of-the-art cyclone-converter furnace is at the heart of the process, and reaches temperatures that allow direct feeding of iron ore and coal. Normally, the materials would have to be prepared before processing – with the help of this new furnace type, this is no longer necessary. “This process significantly reduces the number of energy-intensive steps required for the conventional steel-making process,” the company says. This also reduces energy consumption and emission levels. While in the beginning there was talk of “at least 20 percent” less CO2 emissions, long-term testing has shown that it could in fact be as much as 50 percent. According to the company, a plant is currently being planned that will use this process to produce liquid iron on an industrial scale. It will be operational in about seven years.

Which process is ultimately adopted across the board remains to be seen. A current study of the Fraunhofer Institute for System and Innovation Research initiated by the European Commission has come to a similar conclusion: emissions in the EU could be reduced by 95 percent through “innovative CO2-neutral technologies and far-reaching technical changes”. The steel industry has taken the first steps. ‘Green steel’ could one day become a reality.

‘World first’ as hydrogen used to power commercial steel production

Trial at a commercial steel mill in Sweden shows that clean-burning H2 can replace the fossil fuels currently used to produce high-temperature heat

A steel rolling mill in the UK.Photo: AFP/Getty

28 April 2020

By Leigh Collins

Hydrogen has been used to power commercial steel production for the first time, replacing liquefied natural gas (LNG) as the source of high-temperature heat at a pilot project in Sweden.

Swedish steel maker Ovako’s trial at its Hofors steel mill, in conjunction with hydrogen producer Linde Gas, showed that H2 had no affect on the quality of steel.

“This is a major development for the steel industry,” said Göran Nyström, executive vice-president of group marketing & technology at Ovako. “It is the first time that hydrogen has been used to heat steel in an existing production environment. Thanks to the trial, we know that hydrogen can be used simply and flexibly, with no impact on steel quality, which would mean a very large reduction in the carbon footprint.”

The company said that “this historic development for the steel industry proves that carbon dioxide emissions from rolling can be eliminated provided the right financial support and infrastructure are in place”.

“Given the right conditions, Ovako could therefore introduce hydrogen heating for furnaces at all its rolling mills and thereby drastically reduce its already world-leading low carbon footprint from cradle to gate.”

An Ovako spokesperson tells Recharge that to begin such a roll-out, the company would “need to get funding and collaborate with the right industrial partners”.

Ovako already uses electric-arc furnaces powered by renewable energy to melt scrap steel and produce its base product, but LNG to provide the heat at its rolling mills — where pre-produced steel is passed through pairs of rollers that reduce its thickness and makes the thickness uniform.

More than 95% of the world’s hydrogen is today derived from natural gas and coal, causing nine to 12 tonnes of CO2 emissions for every tonne of H2 produced. Although hydrogen is a clean gas, releasing only water vapour when burned, there is no point replacing the coke, coal or LNG used in steel production with H2 unless that hydrogen is produced from renewable energy (green) or if the CO2 emitted in its production is captured and stored (blue).

Both green and blue hydrogen are currently expensive to produce, available in limited quantities and would increase the cost of steel production, so companies are reluctant to make the switch — unless the clean H2 was subsidised in some way.

According to the World Steel Association, the steel industry generates 7-9% “of direct emissions from the global use of fossil fuel”.(Copyright)

More aggressive EU industrial strategy to back renewables and hydrogen Read more

'Hydrogen could meet quarter of world's energy needs – at $11 trillion cost'Read more

‘Ridiculous to suggest green hydrogen alone can meet world’s H2 needs’Read more

Hydrogen steelmaking for a low-carbon economy

Three Swedish companies plan to implement fossil-free steel production. Understanding these key factors will help make this ambitious plan a reality.

2018

Åhman, M., Olsson, O., Vogl, V., Nyqvist, B., Maltais, A., Nilsson, L.J., Hallding, K., Skånberg, K. and Nilsson, M. (2018). Hydrogen steelmaking for a low-carbon economy: A joint LU-SEI working paper for the HYBRIT project. EESS report no 109 and SEI working paper WP 2018-07. Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, and Lund University, Lund.

Photo: lagereek / Getty Images.

Steel production accounts for approximately 7 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. To meet the targets set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, the steel sector must go through a systemic change that involves the full value chain, from production to recycling.

In the spring of 2016, three Swedish companies – LKAB (iron ore mining), SSAB (steel manufacturer) and Vattenfall (power utility) – announced their ambition to develop and implement a novel process for fossil-free steel production in Sweden. This process would use hydrogen (instead of coal) for the direct reduction of iron oxide/ore (H-DR), combined with an electric arc furnace (EAF). It would be almost completely fossil-free when the hydrogen is produced from electrolysis of water by use of renewable electricity. The concept is called Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology, or HYBRIT for short.

This joint report from SEI and Lund University provides an overview and analysis of the H-DR concept and the key aspects that makes it a promising route for decarbonisation of the steel industry. The overall objective is to identify key factors – technical, economic and political – that need to be better understood in order to develop industrial strategies and public policies for decarbonising the steel industry.

Read the working paper

Effect of Hydrogen on Iron and Steel During Production, Fabrication, and Use, 1962

View on ScienceDirect

Hydrogen in Steel

1st Edition

Effect of Hydrogen on Iron and Steel During Production, Fabrication, and Use

Author: Michael Smialowski
Paperback ISBN: 9780080096971
eBook ISBN: 9781483213712
Imprint: Pergamon
Published Date: 1st January 1962
Page Count: 468

Description

Hydrogen in Steel: Effect of Hydrogen on Iron and Steel During Production, Fabrication, and Use focuses on the effect of hydrogen on iron and steel during production, fabrication, and use. Topics covered range from the solubility of hydrogen in iron and ferrous alloys to the diffusion and permeation of hydrogen through iron and steel. Electrochemical problems related to the ability of iron to absorb hydrogen from aqueous solutions are also considered. Comprised of 19 chapters, this book begins with a detailed treatment of the nature and properties of metal-hydrogen systems, paying particular attention to the behavior of hydrogen in the bulk of the metal phase and the mechanism of reactions between metals and hydrogen or hydrogen-producing compounds. The reader is then introduced to the solubility of hydrogen in iron and ferrous alloys as well as the nature of the final product of the hydrogen-iron interaction. Subsequent chapters deal with dimensional changes and stresses produced in steel by cathodically evolved hydrogen; the effects of hydrogen on the physical, mechanical, and chemical properties of iron and steel; influence of welding on hydrogen; and sulfide corrosion cracking of steel. The effects of pickling on steel are also examined, along with the blistering and embrittlement caused by hydrogen on the base metal during electroplating. This book will be of value to students and practitioners in the field of physical chemistry.

Table of Contents

Hydrogen in Steel - 1st Edition (elsevier.com)

Another nail in coal’s coffin? German steel furnace runs on renewable hydrogen in world first

Michael Mazengarb 13 November 2019

German manufacturing giant Thyssenkrupp has completed a successful, first-of-its-kind demonstration of running a steel furnace completely on hydrogen, a development that is likely to further dent the future prospects for the global coal industry.

The company successfully demonstrated the ability for hydrogen to be used to fuel a steel blast furnace, and Thyssenkrupp sees the achievement as the first step towards transitioning the manufacturing industry towards zero-emissions steel production.

The use of hydrogen to fuel the blast furnaces in steel production also provides a pathway for using renewable hydrogen, potentially eliminating the dependence of the industry on coal.

“Today is a groundbreaking day for the steel industry,” chairman of thyssenkrupp Steel Europe Premal Desai told RenewEconomy in an interview in Sydney.

“We are doing pioneering work here. The use of hydrogen is the key lever for climate-neutral steel production. Today’s test is another step in the transformation of our production, which will culminate in green steel.

“At the same time, we see what is possible when business and government work together towards a common goal. We are very grateful to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for supporting the project.”

As part of the demonstration conducted in its ‘furnace 9’, thyssenkrupp fed hydrogen into one of 28 tuyeres, or nozzles, that otherwise supply coal into the blast furnace.

Following the successful trial, Thyssenkrupp plans to scale up the injection to all 28 tuyeres within the furnace and aims to eventually run at least three furnaces completely on hydrogen by 2023.

“We want to reduce emissions with hydrogen while continuing to produce pig iron of the same quality,” thyssenkrupp’s chief technical officer Dr Arnd Köfler said.

“At the same time we are breaking new ground with the tests on blast furnace 9, so it is now a question of continuously analyzing and evaluating the furnace’s operation. The results will help us to widen the use of hydrogen to all 28 tuyeres.”

The demonstration project was funded with the support of the North Rhine-Westphalia state government, with the direction to commence the injection of hydrogen fuel into the steel furnace being issued by the state economics and digital minister Dr Andreas Pinkwart.

“The project is an important step on the path to a greenhouse gas-neutral industry and a good example of how innovative key technologies can be developed in North Rhine-Westphalia. We need to keep driving the use of hydrogen in industry because it offers great opportunities, especially in steel production,” Pinkwart said.

Thyssenkrupp is one of the world’s largest steel producers and produces around 12 million tonnes of crude steel annually. The company has committed to achieving a 30 per cent reduction in the company’s emissions by 2030. The company is also aiming to become carbon neutral by 2050.

“We’ve set ourselves a clear goal with our climate strategy,” thyssenkrupp executive board member Dr Klaus Keysberg said.

“Steel production will play an important part in reaching our climate targets because the potential for reducing emissions is huge. That’s why we’re working flat out to drive the transition to hydrogen technology.”

It’s a huge development in the use of zero-emissions and renewable energy supplies in the manufacture of industrial products like steel and presents a major threat to the coal industry.

In conventional blast furnaces around 300 kilograms of coking coal and 200 kilograms of pulverised coal are used in the production of a tonne of pig iron.

Many have argued, including the leaders of both major Australian political parties and various members of the coal lobby, that coal will be required for decades to come, citing the need for coal in steel production to supply materials to the renewables industry.

Federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese recently told a CEDA conference in Perth that the growth in renewable electricity projects will drive demand for Australian coal.

“It takes more than 200 tonnes of metallurgical coal to produce one wind turbine,” Albanese said. “According to forecasts of global growth in wind power capacity to 2030, Australia could be exporting 15.5 million tonnes of coking coal to build these turbines.”

But this weeks demonstration by a major steel producer in thyssenkrupp puts that contention into question.

Thyssenkrupp has led research into the use of renewable hydrogen in steel production, work commencing in April to undertake preliminary research and simulations of injecting hydrogen into the steel furnace.

Thyssenkrupp sees the successful demonstration of hydrogen injection as a crucial step to transitioning this research into fully-fledged industrial application.

The company intends to commission new steel furnaces in the mid-2020s, that will initially use hydrogen to produce ‘sponge-iron’, that will be separately converted into crude steel using renewably powered electric-arc furnaces.

Michael Mazengarb is a journalist with RenewEconomy, based in Sydney. Before joining RenewEconomy, Michael worked in the renewable energy sector for more than a decade.

Why Hydrogen Will Never Be The Future Of Electric Cars

James Morris
Contributor FORBES
Sustainability
I write about the rapidly growing world of electric vehicles
JULY 4,2020

A decade ago, it seemed like there were two potential contenders to replace fossil fuel for personal transportation – electricity and hydrogen. The hydrogen option had a lot going for it. You could fill your car up just like fossil fuel, but instead of noxious gases coming out of the tailpipe, the exhaust would just be pure water vapour. It sounded like the perfect step forward towards a greener future where we could carry on using our vehicles as before, only without the environmental downsides. Compared to waiting around for an EV’s battery to recharge, hydrogen appeared to be the much more convenient option.

Why hasn't hyrdogen delivered on its promise of being the green car fuel of the future? GETTY

But ten years later, it’s very clear that battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are dominating the shift towards more environmentally friendly transport instead. By the end of 2019, only 7,500 hydrogen cars had been sold around the world. But by the end of 2018, there were already over 5 million plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) globally, and sales have been accelerating considerably since then. The BEV segment within this has never been less than 55% and is now more like 75%. In the UK, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, BEVs were up to 4.3% of the overall car market year-on-year by May 2020, representing a 131.8% increase since 2019. The BEV is starting to challenge fossil fuel cars, and their fuel cell alternatives are getting nowhere.

The new Toyota Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle, on display at the 2019 Los Angeles Auto ... [+] AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Toyota was one company that truly believed in the hydrogen future, and produced the very credible FCV-R concept in 2011 that developed into the Mirai, which became commercially available in 2015. A second generation will be released in 2021. Honda has also produced a couple of fuel cell vehicles, the Clarity Fuel Cell and FCX Clarity. Hyundai has the Tucson Fuel Cell. So there are some choices available, and these vehicles are all quite viable for everyday usage, with the Mirai offering a range of 312 miles on a tank, and the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell managing a very healthy 366 miles.

So why haven’t hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) taken off in the same way as BEVs, considering their convenience? June 2019 could be the month that scrawled the writing on the wall. No sooner had a chemical plant producing hyrdogen in Santa Clara exploded, leaving FCV users in California short of fuel, but just a few days later a refuelling station in Sandvika, Norway also went up in flames. This really brought home the truth that hydrogen can be a dangerously explosive gas – as if we didn’t know it already. I haven’t heard of any cases of the cars themselves detonating, and the fuel tanks are now Kevlar-lined to protect against this explosive possibility. But it was hardly a confidence-inspiring series of events.

We've known that hydrogen can be a dangerous gas for transportation since the Hindenberg disaster... ... [+] CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

AHHH THAT OLD TROPE WHICH HAS FOREVER TAINTED AND DAMAGED BOTH HYDROGEN AND AIRSHIPS

However, the safety concerns are not the main reason why hydrogen is a far inferior option for personal transportation than BEVs. If one of your main goals is to save the planet, BEVs are considerably more energy efficient than FCVs, when you take into account the whole series of steps between power generation and propulsion. With a BEV, once the electricity is generated – hopefully from a renewable source – the supply of this to your vehicle charging location loses about 5%. The charging and discharging of the battery then lose another 10%. Finally, the motor wastes another 5% driving the vehicle. That makes for a total loss of 20%.

With a hydrogen fuel cell, however, you first have to convert the electricity to hydrogen via electrolysis, which is only 75% efficient. Then the gas has to be compressed, chilled and transported, which loses another 10%. The fuel cell process of converting hydrogen back to electricity is only 60% efficient, after which you have the same 5% loss from driving the vehicle motor as for a BEV. The grand total is a 62% loss – more than three times as much. Or, to put it another way, for every kW of electricity supply, you get 800W for a BEV, but only 380W for an FCV – less than half as much. That’s a huge inefficiency if you’re hoping for a greener future, and doesn’t even take into account the fact that 95% of hydrogen is currently generated from fossil fuel sources.

Despite its inefficiences, hydrogen can still make sense as a fuel type for large commercial ... [+] PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Nevertheless, hydrogen still has niches where its main strengths – lightness and quick refuelling – give it a clear advantage. While you can fit your personal driving lifestyle around strategic battery charging stops, this is not ideal for a commercial vehicle that needs to run for very long periods and distances with only short waits to refuel. The weight of batteries for eight hours of continual usage would also be prohibitive in a train, for example. So, for industrial vehicles, hydrogen seems like a viable option, despite the inefficiency. Nevertheless, in the UK, there were only ten hydrogen-powered buses in service in March 2019, alongside 155 electric ones (with more arriving) and 3,669 hybrid ones. But a hydrogen double-decker is also coming into service in London, with hydrogen diggers and trains also already in use. Stock market darling Nikola Motor is working on hydrogen semi-trailer trucks alongside electric and hybrid variants.

But for personal car users, it’s no contest. Hydrogen evangelists are still arguing that FCVs are the future of personal transport and the technology will take off in 2020. It’s likely that FCV energy supply-chain efficiency will be improved over time and more renewable energy sources used in hydrogen production. However, considering the number of BEVs already on the road, FCVs have lost this battle already and will never catch up. A BEV is a viable form of personal transportation right now in most developed Western nations. There are lots of options with over 200 miles of range, and Tesla +0.6%TSLA has even hit 400 miles. There are charging points springing up all the time, with more than twice as many EV charging points in the UK as petrol stations. The battle for the future of green personal transportation is over, and battery electric vehicles have already won.

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