Salzgitter has formed a project named “GrInHy“ – Green Industrial Hydrogen via reversible high-temperature electrolysis – together with various international partners. This is for the production of hydrogen that in future could help reduce CO2 emissions in the steelmaking process.   

The project’s core will be a high-performance high-temperature electrolyser (HTE) at the Salzgitter Flachstahl strip mill. The unit will be able to convert steam into hydrogen as well as oxygen by means of electrolysis, and produce power by means of fuel cells. Its start of operation is planned for summer 2017.

The hydrogen produced by the HTE could partially substitute carbon as a reduction agent in the blast furnace, or be used in annealing processes, the company explains.

As Kallanish has reported, voestalpine and Austrian utility Verbund have also recently teamed up for research into hydrogen, but emphasised that hydrogen-based steel production remains a concept for the future. Salzgitter, too, notes that economic production is not possible under present conditions, and that the EU is supporting the project with €4.5 million to test its technical and economic feasibility.

The other partners in the project are Boeing, high-temperature fuel cell and electrolyser systems maker Sunfire, the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, the European Institute For Energy Research (EIFER), the Czech Institute of Physics of Materials (IPM), and Italy’s Politecnico di Torino (POLITO).