Decarbonisation of the steel industry is both a necessity and an opportunity. This isn’t just good for the environment – it’s also good for business. Those operations which are the first to decarbonise their steelmaking will gain market share, create competitive advantage and meet the growing demand from customers across the globe for cleaner, low emission , iron and steel. We’re here to tell you why LIBERTY Whyalla is perfectly placed to capture this opportunity.
Traditional steel production uses carbon – in the form of coal – in blast furnaces to strip the oxygen from iron oxide (iron ore) and thereby create CO2. As a result, steelmaking accounts for around 9% of global CO 2 emissions. At the same time demand for our products will grow significantly.
Our plan is to combine hydrogen production and steelmaking technology with highly energy efficient electric arc furnaces. It is underpinned by raw materials and large-scale renewable energy, to become carbon neutral by 2030 and lead the charge to GREENSTEEL. This is a huge challenge but LIBERTY Whyalla is perfectly placed to meet this target.
Our mines in Whyalla, South Australia provide us with access to abundant high quality magnetite ore – an essential ingredient for green iron and steel production. We will unlock our vast magnetite resource and convert it into two value add premium products: magnetite concentrate; and direct reduction (DR) quality pellets for use in the Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) process.
We will use renewable electricity like wind and solar to initially produce energy to power our plants and then to produce green hydrogen, which will replace carbon as the reducing agent in the direct reduction process. Natural gas will be a transition fuel as we move from carbon to hydrogen while commissioning and stabilising the new steelmaking processes.
We will replace our BFs with DRI units and our BOFs with EAFs. The DRI units will start with natural gas as the transition fuel but will then move to using Hydrogen when it is available. The product produced through the DRI units can also be converted to Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI), which can safely and affordably be transported across the globe as a bulk material.