Simulated shaft furnace assesses hydrogen as fuel for furnaces

The team used laboratory simulations to get an accurate picture of how hydrogen and other materials behave in the extreme conditions of a furnace, as a first step towards piloting a new type of hydrogen-fuelled process.

The study was a collaboration with the Steel and Metals Institute, based at Swansea University, and the Materials Processing Institute, based in Middlesbrough working with global metals and mining companies. The project was funded by the BEIS Industrial Fuel Switching Programme.

Steel can be recycled infinitely with no loss of quality, but the process of manufacturing steel remains carbon-intensive with six per cent of global carbon emissions coming from the ironmaking process, and a single blast furnace producing five million tonnes of carbon annually.

At present, iron is reduced in the furnace using carbon monoxide from coke, which attracts oxygen from the iron ore. The result is that the iron ore becomes pure iron that is ready for steelmaking, but the extra atom of oxygen turns carbon monoxide into the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.