German steel producer Salzgitter has signed a pre-contract for the offtake of Uniper-produced green hydrogen from a planned 200MW electrolysis plant at the port of Wilhelmshaven.
Depending on the availability of Germany’s planned core hydrogen network and a specific pipeline route from Wilhelmshaven to Salzgitter, Uniper could supply up to 20,000 tonnes of green hydrogen per year from 2028 for the steelmaker’s low-carbon steel programme.
The companies said a pipeline connection was “absolutely essential” and must be established as “quickly as possible,” urging pipeline operators and policymakers to agree on an accelerated timetable.
The Salzgitter Low CO2 Steelmaking (SALCOS®) programme includes converting the company’s existing steel production from blast furnaces to direct reduction, initially based on natural gas and later using hydrogen.
By switching plants to 100% green hydrogen-fed DRI systems, Salzgitter expects to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by over 95%.
Gunnar Groebler, CEO of Salzgitter, said the production and availability of green hydrogen was a “key success criteria” for the programme.
“This agreement with Uniper is therefore another important step on our path to green steel,” Groebler added. “The energy infrastructure and the associated power grids now urgently need to be expanded.”
Set to be built on the side of a former coal-fired power plant, Uniper’s Wilhelmshaven electrolyser installation will utilise North Sea offshore wind farms and look to access the planned €19.8bn 9,700km core German hydrogen network.
Under pipeline network plans, around 60% (5,820km) of the network will be converted natural gas pipelines, with the remaining 3,880km expected to be new dedicated hydrogen pipelines.
Read more: 9,700km hydrogen network planned for Germany
Noting the potential of green hydrogen in heavy-duty industrial processes, Holger Kreetz, Chief Operating Officer at Uniper, said, “We look forward to working with Salzgitter and helping to reduce [its] emissions.”
While the company expects to commission the initial 200MW plant in 2028, it intends to extend capacity in Wilhelmshaven to 1GW to allow 100,000 tonnes of green hydrogen to be produced each year.
The site will also see an import terminal built to bring green ammonia into Germany by ship, offering a further 300,000 tonnes of hydrogen.
Read more: Uniper, TES, NPorts to cooperate on green gas terminal at Wilhelmshaven
Will DRI be key to producing sustainable steel?
Steel production accounts for 8% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions1, making it one of the most polluting industries. With around 1.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions per tonne of steel produced2, against a backdrop of increasing environmental concerns, the need to clean up the process that produces a vitally important material only continues to grow.
Steel, in the most basic sense, is made by mixing carbon and iron at temperatures above 1,400˚C. Primary steelmaking uses a product dubbed Pig Iron – smelted iron from ore, which contains more carbon than needed for steel.
Steelmakers can use a system that bubbles oxygen through molten pig iron, creating equal oxidisation throughout the metal, in doing so, removing excess carbon, while also vaporising or binding impurities made up of elements such as silicon, phosphorus and manganese.
The systems, known as blast furnace-basic oxygen furnaces (BF-BOF), are one of the leading contributors to CO2 emissions from steelmaking. The direct emissions from integrated BOF plants typically amount to 1.8-3.0 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel when coal-fired, and 0.7-1.2 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel if gas-fired3.
However, a system first industrialised in the 1960s that uses fuels to react with oxygen in iron oxide pellets to produce highly metallised reduced iron for steelmaking, looks set to benefit from green hydrogen, leaving just steam as the residual, and potentially reducing CO2 emissions by over 95% – the direct reduction of iron – DRI…
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