Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH has commissioned Tenova for the construction of µDRAL, a demonstration plant for the production of Direct Reduced Iron (DRI), using up to 100% hydrogen as a reducing agent. The plant is based on the ENERGIRON® technology and will be installed on the premises of the Salzgitter steel mill at Salzgitter, Germany.
The µDRAL will have a nominal production capacity of 100 kg/h and will be operated with hydrogen and natural gas showing the flexibility of the technology in terms of fluctuating availabilities of reducing agents, including 100% hydrogen. The DRI produced by µDRAL will be both used in the blast furnace process to save injected coal and in the electric arc furnace of the Peine plant.
The ENERGIRON® process, jointly developed by Tenova and Danieli, represents the base for the plant design and is the most feasible high-intensity H2 DR system available, already designed for extremely low CO2 emissions while processing iron ore pellets. This enables Salzgitter to achieve the long-term CO2 reduction targets, defined with SALCOS® approach.