The steel industry is a main contributor to industrial CO2-emissions and therefore forced to transform into a low carbon economy till 2050. One promising approach to reach this target is the hydrogen-based direct reduction. Direct reduction utilizing the shaft technology is the dominating direct reduction technology but requires agglomerated DR-grade pellet feed as feed material. To overcome this, Primetals Technologies develops a direct reduction process, which is suitable to handle charging of iron ore concentrates (grain size <150 ㎛) directly into the process without need of prior agglomeration and using hydrogen as a reducing agent, named HYFOR (Hydrogen-based fine ore reduction). In this report, the status of development, including the erected pilot plant and a possible up-scaling, is demonstrated.
