Hydrogen metallurgy process under the background of carbon neutrality may be popular

For a long time, the hydrogen metallurgy process has been concerned by the industry because of its low carbon and low energy consumption characteristics, and the exploration of the process in the industry has been hot. The existing research on hydrogen metallurgy technology is gradually moving in the direction of diversification: hydrogen-carbon monoxide mixture iron, pure hydrogen iron making and other technologies are gradually unlocked, which is of great significance for the smooth realization of China's carbon peak carbon neutral goal. In addition to the research of hydrogen metallurgy process, the main factor restricting the effective practice of the process - hydrogen source also ushered in a new development opportunity. Hydrogen production by electrolytic water will provide a strong driving force for the development of hydrogen production industry with the compression of production costs. We have reason to believe that under the background of carbon neutrality, China's hydrogen metallurgy process will achieve great development in a real sense.

Carbon neutrality goal: China's steel industry will face new challenges

The Chinese government's emphasis on environmental protection and its determination to achieve carbon neutrality by 2020 are once again confirmed. China will adopt more powerful policies and measures to achieve the peak of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and strive to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

According to the PBL Norwegian Environmental Assessment Agency, total greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 were about 55.6 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent, an increase of 2%, with the top five carbon emitting countries accounting for 62% of all greenhouse gas emissions, followed by China (26%), the United States (13%), the EU27 (8%), India (7%) and Russia (5%). As a major carbon emitter, China's proposal of carbon neutrality this time is of great significance to the world's carbon emission control and global sustainable development.

Specific to the steel industry, China is the world's steel consumption country, steel manufacturing is also in the forefront of the world. The rising steel production capacity means that it will take some time for China to reach the peak of steel production capacity in the real sense, and it is conservatively estimated that China's steel production will still maintain a good momentum of development in the next ten years, which seems to be different from the above mentioned China to strive to reach the carbon peak before 2030. Therefore, whether the steel industry can achieve effective control of carbon dioxide emissions in the industry through technological innovation and industrial upgrading in the next period of time will directly affect the effective realization of China's carbon peak.

Since the beginning of this century, China's crude steel production has ushered in a rapid rise, and the carbon dioxide emissions of the steel industry have also shown an increasing trend year by year. According to statistics, China's current ton of steel carbon dioxide emissions of about 2 tons, compared with 2000, down 33.2%. Obviously, in the past 20 years, China's steel industry energy conservation and emission reduction work has made more remarkable achievements, but measured by this progress, the carbon peak of the steel industry by 2030 is still not guaranteed to be effectively achieved, which also means that, China's iron and steel industry must adopt more effective energy saving and emission reduction technologies and means, through smelting technology innovation to ensure that the entire industry's carbon emissions are effectively controlled.

Hydrogen metallurgy may provide a solution for carbon reduction in the steel industry

China's existing steelmaking technology mainly has two categories, namely long process and short process, in which the long process involves the use of a large number of carbon-containing raw materials, obviously, carbon dioxide emissions are inevitable; Due to the need for a large amount of electricity in the short process, in view of the fact that China still mainly relies on fire power generation, the large-scale use of electric furnaces will also indirectly cause a large amount of carbon emissions.

Based on this, the steel industry has generally shifted the focus of research from improving existing iron-making equipment to introducing clean raw materials. Among many new iron-making technologies, hydrogen iron-making technology has become the first choice for many new iron-making technologies because of its natural environmental friendliness, and its specific implementation methods and effects are widely favored by the industry.

In the existing hydrogen metallurgy technology in China, the development of hydrogen rich reduction blast furnace and gas base direct reduction shaft furnace is gradually recognized by the industry. The hydrogen-rich reduction blast furnace is involved in the iron-making process by injecting hydrogen, natural gas, coke oven gas and other hydrogen-containing media. Relevant experiments have shown that hydrogen-rich blast furnace reduction iron making can effectively promote the production of pig iron to a certain extent, but because this process is based on traditional blast furnaces, the skeleton effect of coke cannot be completely replaced, that is, there is a limit value of hydrogen injection, and the carbon emission reduction under this process is limited. It is generally believed that the carbon emission reduction range of hydrogen rich blast furnace reduction can reach 10%-20%. This does not seem to mean much to meet our 2030 carbon peak target.