CO2 emission reduction via direct FeCO3 reduction with hydrogen

  • Astrid Loder (Speaker)
  • Lux, S. (Speaker)
  • Matthäus Siebenhofer (Speaker)

Activity: Talk or presentationTalk at conference or symposiumScience to science

Description

CO2 breakthrough technologies are solutions to reduce CO2 emissions. The direct iron ore reduction with hydrogen has great potential as a CO2 saving technology. At the moment the direct reduction is not yet a mature technology and research still needs to be done to reach its full potential.
In this work we used siderite (FeCO3) from the Austrian Erzberg as iron ore. The prove of concept for the direct reduction of siderite with hydrogen is shown in [1], [2]. Hydrogen is able to reduce FeCO3 to elemental iron.
A major question for the implementation of this technology is providing hydrogen for the reduction. For a first implementation the solution could be coker gas. Coker gas has hydrogen contents between 58-65%. By using coker gas, establishing the direct reduction of iron carbonate could be accomplished alongside the state of the art blast furnace process, which would provide a steady hydrogen supply. When hydrogen technology is able to renewably produce the necessary hydrogen amounts the direct reduction would be an already established technology.
We tested different gas composition emulating coker gas in a bench scale fixed bed reactor. A main focus was placed on the methane content in the coker gas (15-25%).
We found that methane in combination with hydrogen does not limit the reducing ability of hydrogen of siderite in the reaction; it is slightly reactive on its own. This means coker gas is a possible hydrogen source for the direct siderite reduction with hydrogen.
[1] G. Baldauf-Sommerbauer, S. Lux, and M. Siebenhofer, “Sustainable iron production from mineral iron carbonate and hydrogen,” Green Chem., vol. 18, no. 23, pp. 6255–6265, 2016.
[2] S. Lux, G. Baldauf-sommerbauer, B. Ottitsch, A. Loder, and M. Siebenhofer, “Iron carbonate beneficiation through reductive calcination – Parameter optimization to maximize methane formation,” Eur. J. Inorg. Chem., no. 13, pp. 1748–1758, 2019.
Period20 Nov 2020
Event titleAIChE Annual Meeting 2020
Event typeConference
LocationVirtualShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational