RE:RE:Fossil free steel using rolled pellets ? No furnaces !The article actually says differently to Peter:
It all starts at LKAB’s mines deep inside the Arctic Circle. The area has one of the richest iron ore deposits in the world, and the raw material has been extracted from there since the late 19th century. The stuff is mixed with additives and rolled into pellets about the size of a marble — but heavier — and then taken by electric train to Lulea, home to the hydrogen-powered Hybrit works.
Hybrit’s path to green steel continues in a tent about the size of an ice hockey rink, with heaps of the pellets riding a conveyor belt to the plant. Inside, they’re heated and then shaped into bricks of sponge iron — the raw material for steelmaking. What’s unique is Hybrit’s use of green hydrogen, still a nascent technology but already central to net-zero pledges by the European Union and China.
Hybrit burns the clean fuel — and not dirty coal — to remove oxygen from the iron ore. What comes out of the Hybrit plant is fossil-free sponge iron brickets, resembling a cluster of soap bars. They’re shipped to SSAB’s plant in Oxelosund, south of Stockholm. The first steel plates were made this summer and delivered to Volvo in August.