camelot-forum.co.uk

from the last-hydrogen-filling-station in London link I found this:
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/industr ... -1-1442290

Because of the huge amounts of hydrogen that would needed to replace fossil fuels in iron production, countries such as Germany are looking to import green H2 at scale in the coming years, most of which will arrive at European shores in the form of ammonia — which is far easier to transport across long distances than pure hydrogen (compressed or liquefied) and also has a higher energy density by volume, making it an economically efficient method of transporting H2.

But this would mean that imported ammonia would have to be cracked into hydrogen (and nitrogen) for use in green steel production — an expensive energy-intensive process (requiring about 30% of the energy stored in the H2 and the use of the rare metal, ruthenium, as a catalyst) that would add significantly to the cost of green hydrogen.

Being able to use imported ammonia directly would therefore reduce costs by about 18%, according to the study, Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel, written by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research and published in the journal Advanced Science.

and lots of other interesting aspects/advantages given too.
A

Lets not forget the UK already uses H2 quite a lot.

17 Aug 2021 — Britain produces around 27 terawatt hours (Twh) of hydrogen a year, mostly from fossil fuels

The H2 thing is being overplayed by the FF industry.

Why import it when it could be made onsite by electrolysis from RE. As we increase RE leccy the times when we have excess will also increase and maybe used for on site electrolsis running overnight.

The other aspect is that countries like Australia, where Germany has made considerable electrolysis investment, will look to leverage their iron and prolific RE potential to export green steel and generally more refining of other minerals ie value added, to replace all that coal etc they will not be exporting.

In the UK we need people with vision who are not focused on short time spans.

currently importing 7GW of leccy -this may be a record.

Industrial hydrogen use is a decarbonisation issue in and of itself, let alone thinking that hydrogen can be used at scale for decarbonising other industries (like ground transport!)..

Global H2 consumption is about 100 million tons/year. 99% of that is from gas or coal steam reformation.
Almost all of it is used very close to the point of production in other chemical processes. It's an absolute beast of a molecule to store and transport.

But then ammonia isn't exactly a benign chemical to transport either. Nasty toxic stuff.

Hydrogen has no place in steel making and the industry spends an awful lot of time investment and energy removing the stuff.

Hydrogen is used in part in the production of Iron where it reduces Iron oxide's to Iron, the Iron then goes on to have most of the Carbon and remaining impurities oxidised out by dint of the addition of copious quantities of oxygen to make raw steel that is then adjusted metallurgically with alloys to gain the right properties for the end point application. Engineering and structural steels can in general be made more economically from scrap in arc furnaces and this do not require hydrogen (as i say we used to go to extreme lengths to avoid hydrogen entrainment)

Even strip manufacturing can utilise a large proportion of scrap and both long and strip process' only generally require small amounts of virgin iron as a diluent to allow out of specification scrap melts with high Tin, Copper or other elements to be diluted to a point within specification.

This idea of making ammonia to transport Hydrogen to make raw iron is ridiculous, better to allow the countries with the iron ore to develop iron smelting and sell iron to developed countries as diluent - keep the ammonia for fertiliser production.

If they want to make green steel then they should build more arc furnaces, improve scrap collection from bins and waste streams, assign surplus electrical production from RE sources to steel production and stop transporting millions of tonnes of iron ore from the far east to Europe to make virgin iron that you then have to add excessive alloying agents to make in to steel while you let the scrap in Europe go on a boat all the way to........yes you guessed it the far east to be melted into steel in ARC furnaces !

Moxi

Thanks for the insight Moxi.
Just shows how things are messed up on so many levels. But hydrogen is not the solution on so many levels.

I read yesterday that with current global hydrogen production, the CO2 emissions are greater than the whole of the UK's CO2 footprint.
That's why we all need to keep going back to the point that hydrogen production is a decarbonisation issue in and of itself.

Makes far more sense to use electrolysis - https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/79625

It would if iron was a high price commodity but the cost of the Iridium anode will be prohibitive, given global demand for the platinum member metal is around 230,000 ounces annually with a cost per ounce of around $4,800 US. Given that in 2021 1.9bilion tonnes of steel were made via the Oxygen steel making process' that would require approximately 2.28 billion tonnes of molten iron, clearly even at first observations the scale of iron production to that of Iridium indicates the scaling failure of the proposed technology and that's without delving in to the mining and processing requirements for iridium and their impact on the environment.

Its a great article but written from academia's point of view and doesn't appear to take cognisance of the truly massive scale of the Global Iron and Steel industry.

Amongst other occupations I was Consultant to the Ferrous and Non Ferrous metallurgical industries for many many years and in the iron and steel sector they are working on razor thin margins where the profit per tonne of product at the gate can literally be sub 1 dollar so in cheap steel products volume production is king to bring operational costs to the minimum. The best way to reverse the trend and drive environmental practise is to raise the cost of steel to the consumer and ensure that cost is transferred to green steel production but we all know the consumer often can't or won't pay more and even if they do the profit goes to the owner or shareholders pockets and not back in to process development.

The I&S industry began a race to the bottom after 1945 and this race has continued ever since with the bones of the industry now largely owned by a few entrepreneurs and states.

Moxi