Iron-Ore Reduction Using Green Hydrogen: A Study for Recycling Wastes in Egyptian Steel Industry

A new prospective in the Egyptian steelmaking industry using pure hydrogen to reduce waste iron ores in a two-stage fluidized bed reactor through direct reduction process is presented, modeled, and analyzed. The main advantage of applying this route to the steel industry is the enormous reduction in CO2 emissions compared to today's dominant routes that rely on the blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF/BOF). Moreover, the hydrogen direct reduction (H-DR) process could be directly applied for the reuse of the waste imported lump iron ores that are been crashed during the transportation process to a small fines particles; making them unusable in blast furnace processes unless sintering process is applied. A complete study to verify the applicability of this idea in Egypt has been investigated and comparing it to current fluidized bed reactor using syngas as the reducing agent.