How can DRI deliver on decarbonisation? Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is touted as a solution to reduce emissions from DRI plants. However, its history of underperformance and failure indicates it cannot play a role in decarbonising the steel sector. Midrex is the leading provider of gas-based direct reduction (DR) shafts, with 80% market share. The company has emphasised that deploying CCS with this technology faces significant challenges. In a recent article, Midrex questioned the role of CCS in decarbonising the steel sector and specifically the DRI pathway: “For now, CCS remains a niche technology for steel and is likely to work only in very specific locations and under particular circumstances… Despite being promoted as a decarbonization tool for heavy industry, CCS has delivered limited success in practice… Most Direct Reduction plants lack access to users or local CO2 [carbon dioxide] storage sites on a scale that could make CCS commercially viable. Transporting the CO2 long distances to such sites is too expensive.”
EMSTEEL is the host of the only commercial-scale CCS facility in the steel sector, launched in 2016. The Al Reyadah CCS facility, operated by ADNOC, captures only about 25% of the total emissions from the EMSTEEL mill, which uses fossil gas to produce DRI. The captured carbon is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), helping to release more carbon emissions. Without the EOR element of the project, the CCS plant would probably never have been constructed. In the nine years since Al Reyadah became operational, not a single other commercial-scale CCS plant for iron and steelmaking has come online. EMSTEEL is now shifting to using hydrogen to produce low-emissions steel.Green hydrogen To produce green iron via DR technology, the use of green hydrogen is inevitable; no other reducing agent can yield truly green iron. Gas-based DRI falls short of the threshold to be considered green iron – at best it can only be classified as “grey iron”. “Blue hydrogen” – made using fossil fuels coupled with CCS – suffers from the same issues faced by any use of CCS. In Sweden, Stegra is currently constructing the first commercial-scale DRI-EAF [electric arc furnace] plant designed to run on hydrogen from the outset, scheduled to commence operations next year. The plant has already installed 200 megawatts (MW) of its planned 740MW of electrolysers, and from late 2026 it will be in continuous operation producing green steel. One of the most recent entrants to Australia’s green iron sector, Progressive Green Solutions (PGS), has appointed thyssenkrupp nucera, also the supplier for Stegra, as its preferred partner for 1.4 gigawatts of electrolysers. In its first phase, the project targets production of 7Mt of iron ore pellets and 2.5Mt of hot briquetted iron (HBI), using green hydrogen.........read on https://ieefa.org/resources/