Sustainable steel through hydrogen plasma reduction of iron ore: process, kinetics, microstructure, chemistry

TL;DR

This study explores hydrogen plasma reduction of hematite as a sustainable alternative to traditional steelmaking, demonstrating rapid, nearly complete reduction within 15 minutes and analyzing microstructural and chemical changes to ensure low impurity levels.

Contribution

It introduces hydrogen plasma reduction as an efficient, low-impurity method for iron ore reduction, with detailed kinetic and microstructural analysis showing its potential for sustainable steel production.

Findings

Complete reduction achieved within 15 minutes under optimized conditions.

Reduction rates are comparable to existing hydrogen-based reduction methods.

Gangue elements are effectively removed, resulting in nearly pure iron.

Abstract

Fe- and steelmaking is the largest single industrial CO2 emitter, accounting for 6.5% of all CO2 emissions on the planet. This fact challenges the current technologies to achieve carbon-lean steel production and to align with the requirement of a drastic reduction of 80% in all CO2 emissions by around 2050. Thus, alternative reduction technologies have to be implemented for extracting iron from its ores. The H-based direct reduction has been explored as a sustainable route to mitigate CO2 emissions, where the reduction kinetics of the intermediate oxide product FexO wustite into Fe is the rate-limiting step of the process. The total reaction has an endothermic net energy balance. Reduction based on a H plasma may offer an attractive alternative. Here, we present a study about the reduction of hematite using H plasma. The evolution of both, chemical composition and phase transformations was investigated in several intermediate states. We found that hematite reduction kinetics depends on the balance between the initial input mass and the arc power. For an optimized input mass-arc power ratio, complete reduction was obtained within 15 min of exposure to the H plasma. The wustite reduction is also the rate-limiting step towards complete reduction. Nonetheless, the reduction reaction is exothermic, and its rates are comparable with those found in H-based direct reduction. Chemical and microstructure analysis revealed that the gangue elements partition to the remaining oxide regions, probed by energy dispersive spectroscopy and atom probe tomography. Si-enrichment was observed in the interdendritic fayalite domains, at the wustite/Fe hetero-interfaces and in the primarily solidified oxide particles inside the Fe. With proceeding reduction, however, such elements are gradually removed from the samples so that the final iron product is nearly free of gangue-related impurities.