The steel industry will have a wide range of green hydrogen application scenarios

Recently, Guizhou, Shandong and other places have issued documents calling for low-carbon and green transformation of industries with “two highs” (high energy consumption and high emissions). The Guizhou Provincial People's Government issued the "Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Management of the "Two Highs" Projects, which stated that by 2025, the carbon emission intensity of key "two highs" industries will be significantly reduced, and the green and low-carbon development capacity will be significantly enhanced; The "Implementation Plan for Energy Efficiency Transformation and Upgrading of "Two High" Industries" clearly states that "two high" industries should carry out green and low-carbon technology research and promote green and low-carbon technological achievements.

According to the "Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Prevention and Control of Ecological Environment Sources for High Energy Consumption and High Emission Construction Projects" issued by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in June 2021, the "two high" projects are temporarily classified as coal power, petrochemical, chemical, steel, and non-ferrous metal smelting. According to the statistics of 6 industry categories such as building materials and building materials, the steel industry, as a pillar industry of the national economy, has an urgent need for low-carbon transformation, and the application of green hydrogen energy will be an important path for its transformation.

The application of hydrogen energy in the steel industry mainly includes three fields: hydrogen metallurgy, hydrogen energy transportation and steel rolling production.

In the field of hydrogen metallurgy, hydrogen energy is used in steel smelting, which can realize low-carbon iron making from the source, and has multiple application directions in the smelting process. In the sintering process, hydrogen can be used as sintering fuel to reduce the consumption of high-carbon energy such as coke powder/coal powder; in the blast furnace process, hydrogen can be used as a reducing agent for blast furnace injection. In addition, hydrogen energy can also be applied to non-blast furnace ironmaking processes such as direct reduction and smelting reduction ironmaking.

In the field of hydrogen energy transportation, the iron and steel industry belongs to the heavy logistics industry. The long-process iron and steel enterprises' ton steel logistics demand can reach 4 to 5 times the crude steel output. The annual external transportation volume of China's iron and steel industry can reach 4 billion tons to 5 billion tons. In addition to the replacement of traditional energy by hydrogen energy in the field of commercial vehicles, non-road mobile machinery, railway locomotives and other traditional energy consumption links used by iron and steel enterprises can be used as application scenarios for hydrogen energy.

In the field of steel rolling production, hydrogen energy is mainly used in the cold rolling production line, and the cold rolling annealing process requires hydrogen as an annealing protective gas.

In order to promote the promotion and application of green hydrogen in the iron and steel industry, it is necessary to carry out basic research on the preparation, storage, transportation and application of hydrogen energy in the iron and steel industry under the "two-carbon" goal. Demonstration of key technologies such as water hydrogen production, gradually expand the scale of demonstration, and improve the level of low-carbon and clean hydrogen energy technology and equipment. At the same time, it is also necessary to explore the establishment of new energy hydrogen production bases around iron and steel enterprises with large-scale hydrogen energy applications.