China starts producing steel using hydrogen on an industrial scale

Jialong Group launched an industrial scale direct reduction iron production plant with hydrogen. It is expected to produce 300,000 tons of steel per year. Chinese companies are building new, even larger direct reduction plants.

The use of hydrogen allows you to bypass the sintering process and eliminate coking. This makes it possible to almost completely eliminate dust formation and replace CO2 formed in the blast furnace process with water vapor.
China wants to be climate neutral by 2060, and the steel industry accounts for 15% of the total. local problems.
The Jialong Group emphasizes that the use of hydrogen bypasses the sintering process and eliminates coke and therefore its production. In total, this can reduce costs by 38 percent. emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide by 98 percent. Dust emission and complete disposal of dioxins and waste water containing phenol cyanide.

Firstly, the plant, which produces up to 300 thousand tons of steel per year, will not emit 112 thousand tons of carbon dioxide. It will use 10,000 tons of hydrogen. On the first day of work, April 13, the plant produced 156 tons of pig iron.

The plant was built by Inner Mongolia Sesp Technology, a subsidiary of Beijing Jianlong Heavy Industry Group, at a cost of 1.09 billion yuan (approximately $ 170 million) in 21 months. The investment was supposed to last less, but the processes were stretched out due to the coronavirus epidemic.