German steel company Thyssenkrupp Steel has announced an investment of 2.4 million euros to expand laboratory infrastructure at its Duisburg—Schwelgern plant to support the evaluation of iron ores for future low-carbon steel production.
The project is part of Thyssenkrupp Steel's ongoing efforts to transition to low-emission steel production, with a focus on improving raw material quality control and process optimization.
The new production facility is part of the company's larger transition to climate-neutral steel production, with a focus on testing raw materials for hydrogen-based direct reduction (DR) processes. The company will evaluate key properties such as the ability to recover, resistance to destruction, and the tendency to clump or agglomerate during processing.
Support for hydrogen-based steel production
Thyssenkrupp Steel said that the new laboratory will simulate realistic hydrogen-based working conditions, which will allow for a more accurate assessment of future raw materials. The test conditions will correspond to an increase in hydrogen content over time, which corresponds to the company's planned transition to hydrogen-based steel production.
Steam injection experiments will also be conducted in two test furnaces, which will help to better understand the degree of compression and the performance of the process.
The company emphasized that its future production process will combine direct remediation and electric melting, which will provide greater flexibility in the use of raw materials. This approach will make it possible to use both DR brand pellets and conventional blast-furnace pellets, expanding the possibilities of finding suppliers while maintaining the efficiency of the process.
Author: SteelOrbis Editorial Team
Steelorbis.com
