HYDRA: the decarbonization of steel industry The key role of hydrogen in steel production

Business	Period	Project coordinator	Funding scheme
R&D - Industry	October 2023 - December 2028	RINA Consulting S.p.A.	European Commission-NextGenerationEU

Challenge 

Approximately 7% of global CO2 emissions are produced by steel industry, with a release of 1.63 tons of CO2 for every ton of steel produced. In relation to the European Union’s goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050, this high level of emissions poses a threat to environmental sustainability and to the measures aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change.

HYDRA is a project coordinated by RINA and funded by European Commission and MIMIT (Ministero delle Imprese e del Made in Italy), that aim to use hydrogen-related technologies to decarbonize the steel production process.

Hydrogen is a resource that enables:

- manage in a sustainable way (from an environmental and economic point of view) the energy needed to the process, integrating the available energy with the support of accessible renewables, and allowing storage and distribution at different times and places.

- To support the mobility and transport sector (e.g. automative, trains, maritime and aviation).

- To be used as a feedstock in the strategic European energy intensive industries (hard-to-abate sectors).

HYDRA aims to:

- Create the H2-Hub to highlight the role and efficiency of hydrogen and foster its use in industrial sectors as a sustainable resource. 

- Introduce an innovative open industrial platform that develops, qualifies and validates use of hydrogen in steelmaking. 

- Support the decarbonization of hard-to-abate industries, designing and developing pilot plants and components for hydrogen use in industrial steel production scenario.

- Develop and adopt an advanced and rigorous procedure at RINA-CSM, which hosts a Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) plant with an Electric Arc Furnace (EAF), to test hydrogen as a reducing agent and energy carrier in steel production.

RINA’s approach

Our role as project coordinator is to offer our expertise in designing and overseeing hydrogen-based decarbonization initiatives, along with competences in the steelmaking sectors developed inside our laboratories and with on-field successful consultancy work for producers all around the world, to create an independent platform every stakeholder can rely on.

With these goals, the H2-Hub will be an international benchmark of excellence, equipped with state-of-the-art experimental facilities for designing, developing, implementing, and qualifying innovative solutions, especially those related to energy transition and Industry 5.0. It will serve as a specialized reference point for promoting and expanding the industrial use of hydrogen.

Furthermore, it will serve as an education center on the topics involved in the project, with a focus on the use of hydrogen in energy-intensive industries. The initiative will promote the dissemination of knowledge, the development of new skills and competencies, and encourage the creation of clusters to support the use of hydrogen also at industry cross-sectorial level in the energy transition.

Conclusions

In conclusion, HYDRA aims to contribute to reduce pollution generated by the steel industry, positioning itself as the world’s first independent platform available to all stakeholders in the supply chain, with the goal of cutting CO₂ emissions by 95%.

Over the next five years, HYDRA plans to provide a 30-meter-high Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) unit, an Electric Arc Furnace (EAF), and a secondary metallurgy section, representative of one of the most reliable production routes for the steel industry toward its predefined sustainability goals.