BHP, POSCO ink MoU to pursue 'near-zero emissions' in ironmaking

Under the new collaboration, a HyREX demonstration plant will be constructed in Pohang, home of POSCO's massive integrated steelworks, that will have an annual production capacity of 300,000 tonnes/year. BHP will be supplying Pilbara iron ore as raw materials to it.

The new demonstration plant follows the success of POSCO's pilot HyREX steel plant launched last year. The facility, also located in Pohang, was able to produce 24 t/d of molten iron, emitting 400 kg of carbon per tonne, market sources said.

POSCO has been leading the decarbonization transition in the steel industry by developing its HyREX technology, an innovation building on FINEX process, as Mysteel Global reported. The technology uses fluidised bed reactors (FBR) to convert fine iron ore into Direct Reduction Iron (DRI), which will be charged into an Electric Smelting Furnace (ESF) to melt DRI and produce hot metal.

Source: POSCO

During the process, only iron ore and hydrogen are used, so compared with the amount of carbon dioxide generated during the traditional blast-furnace steelmaking process, the amount produced using the HyREX process will be significantly less, POSCO maintains. This will meet the standard of "near-zero emissions" ironmaking defined by the International Energy Agency – when crude steel is produced entirely from iron ore without using scrap, and 0.4 tonne or less of carbon dioxide is emitted for per tonne of crude steel produced, Mysteel Global learned.

POSCO has already been developing the hydrogen-based FBR technology at lab-scale and the ESF at pilot-scale. These technologies are designed to use fine iron ore directly without pelletising, which differs from conventional shaft-based DRI processes where the ore must be processed into pellets before use, the announcement noted.

"This collaboration with POSCO marks another important step towards decarbonizing the steel industry and supporting steel mills to potentially unlock multiple pathways to decarbonise steelmaking," BHP's Chief Commercial Officer Rag Udd said in a statement.

Construction of POSCO's demonstration plant at the Pohang works is expected to begin soon, with commissioning targeted for early 2028, the announcement indicated.

Just two months ago in late August, POSCO and India's largest privately-owned steel company, JSW Group, signed a Non-binding Heads of Agreement (HOA) for a joint venture integrated steel works in India, as reported.  Though details such as the steelmaking technology the plant will employ remain unclear, JSW Steel is known to be interested in HyREX, Korean media noted at the time.

Two weeks prior to the HOA, news broke that BHP was leading a global consortium of steelmakers and other firms exploring the development of carbon capture, utilization and storage hubs across Asia, as Mysteel Global reported. JSW Steel is a consortium member.

"With more than 1 billion tonnes of (steel) production a year in Asia coming from blast furnace capacity, it's important for industry to progress technologies to decarbonise existing steelmaking assets while new commercial pathways to decarbonise steelmaking are developed over time," said Dr Ben Ellis, Vice President of Marketing Sustainability at BHP, had said.

Written by Irene Zhuang, zhuangailing@mysteel.com

Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com