DRP
Hyundai Steel, a leading player in the global steel industry, has announced a $5.8 billion investment in a sustainable steelmaking plant, as part of its commitment to carbon neutrality. This ambitious project will include a direct reduction plant featuring the cutting-edge ENERGIRON technology, jointly developed by Tenova and Danieli, to be fully integrated with a steel mill on approximately 1,700 acres within the River Plex Mega Park, near Donaldsonville, Louisiana, USA.
The ENERGIRON direct reduction plant will be the second of its kind in the USA, with an annual capacity of 2.5 Mtpy of hot and cold Direct Reduced Iron (DRI). It will feature Zero Reformer ENERGIRON technology, and it will deliver DRI with 94% metallization and 2.5% carbon content. Designed to be future-ready, the plant will also be equipped with carbon capture technology and is prepared for the use of hydrogen as a reducing gas, making it the most sustainable steelmaking solution currently accessible on the market.
The plant will convey hot DRI through the HYTEMP pneumatic transport system to the adjacent steelmaking shop and charge the hot product into two EAFs at temperatures exceeding 600°C, optimizing thermal energy utilization and significantly reducing steel production operating costs (OpEx).
“This important order confirms the choice of the market,” stated Stefano Maggiolino, CEO of Tenova HYL, “showing the technological advantages of ENERGIRON and its capacity to meet the requirements of steel makers in the USA in terms of OpEx and sustainability.”
Marco Lapasin, Danieli VP Centro Metallics, reinforced: “It is an important technological achievement for us to provide a system that is flexible for the use of gas and capable of feeding two EAFs with an intrinsically safe and reliable solution such as HYTEMP.”