14 Time May 9/May 16, 2022
ECOPRENEURS
Green steel
from Sweden
BY ALEJANDRO DE LA GARZA
involves first stripping away those oxy-
gen atoms. In a blast furnace, carbon
monoxide generated by burning coke
accomplishes that job, prying loose ox-
ygen from the iron ore to form carbon
dioxide, which is then released into the
atmosphere. SSAB’s HYBRIT plant ac-
complishes the same task using hydro-
gen separated from water by renew-
able energy. For this hydrogen-based
reduction to work, hydrogen is heated
to about 1,600°F with renewably gen-
erated electricity and then injected
into a furnace containing iron ore pel-
lets. The hydrogen combines with
oxygen in the iron ore to form water
vapor, leaving behind what’s known as
sponge iron, which can then be melted
down with recycled scrap to make
steel.SSAB And itS pArtnerS first started
working on the project in 2016. Back
then, Lindqvist says, most other steel-
makers trying to go green were talking
about diverting carbon dioxide pro-
duced during steelmaking and bury-
ing it underground, a process known
as carbon capture and storage (CCS).
“CCS for us was giving a Band-AidAT A sTeel plAnT in luleA, sweden, workers mAke
the world’s most essential construction material the old-
fashioned way: piling iron ore and coke, a kind of coal-
derived fuel, in a huge blast furnace, heating the mixture to
enormous temperatures, and then “tapping” the cauldron of
molten metal, which sends a stream of white-hot pig iron—
and showers of sparks—spilling out along a sluiceway.
But less than a mile away, the plant’s owner, SSAB, is pi-
loting a less dramatic steelmaking process at a new facility.
“It doesn’t look that spectacular,” says Martin Pei, executive
vice president and chief technology officer at the Swedish
steelmaker. “You don’t see very much either, because it’s all
automatically controlled.”
It’s spectacular in a different way, though. Traditional
blast furnaces emit huge amounts of CO₂. But SSAB’s
HYBRIT pilot plant—built in collaboration with Swedish
state-owned mining company LKAB and state-owned power
company Vattenfall—emits nothing but water vapor when it
refines iron ore. Last summer, the facility produced iron for
the world’s first fossil-fuel-free steel, blazing a trail toward
decarbonizing one of the world’s most heavily polluting
industries.
Steel is among the most important materials in modern
society, going into everything from buildings and bridges
to cars and bicycles. It’s also critical to building renewable-
energy infrastructure like wind turbines, which the world
needs in order to eliminate fossil fuels. But making it is an
incredibly polluting process, with the industry responsible
for about 8% of the world’s CO₂ emissions. Addressing those
emissions is one of the most pressing and difficult challenges
of the global energy transition.
With the success of the HYBRIT project, SSAB CEO Mar-
tin Lindqvist has set the company on perhaps the most ag-
gressive decarbonization plan in the industry, ramping up
green steel production and switching over to electric steel
furnaces in order to cut most of the company’s emissions
from its operations in Sweden and Finland by around 2030.
Their green steel endeavor might have been considered little
more than a pipe dream just a few years ago. “Our colleagues
in the industry, they were just [shaking] their heads, and
thought that we were, at best, naive,” says Lindqvist. “Now
everyone seems to think that this is the right way to go.”
Some 75% of the world’s steel is made using blast furnaces
like the traditional one in Lulea, which use huge amounts
of fossil fuels to refine iron ore. Making that process work
without fossil fuels, specifically coke, is a serious metallurgi-
cal challenge. Iron is one of the most common elements on
the surface of the earth, but it’s almost entirely found in the
form of iron ore, where iron atoms are bonded tightly with
oxygen. The task of turning that ore into iron, and then steel,
△
A plant in
Oxelosund
produces the
world’s first
fossil-fuel-free
steel, made using
sponge iron from
SSAB’s new pilot
facility in Lulea