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Recently, the Hebei Iron and Steel Zhangxuan Technology Hydrogen Energy Development and Utilization Engineering Demonstration Project, designed by MCC Jingcheng, has undergone safe, smooth, and continuous production. The product's high-purity direct reduction iron metallization rate has stabilized at over 94%, and all indicators have reached international first-class standards. This marks the successful completion of the first phase of the world's first 1.2 million ton hydrogen metallurgy engineering demonstration project, and also marks a disruptive, demonstrative, and critical step in China's steel industry's transformation from traditional "carbon metallurgy" to new "hydrogen metallurgy", opening a new era of green, low-carbon, and intelligent development in the steel industry.

The first phase of the world's first 1.2 million ton hydrogen metallurgy engineering demonstration project, jointly developed and constructed by Hebei Iron and Steel Group and Italy's TENOVA and MCC Jingcheng, started construction on May 10, 2021 and was fully completed and put into operation on December 16, 2022. It was completed and put into operation at Zhangxuan Technology of Hebei Iron and Steel Group, unlocking new application scenarios for the comprehensive utilization of hydrogen energy in the world. This project adopts the high-pressure vertical furnace zero reforming hydrogen metallurgy technology using coke oven gas as the reducing gas for the first time in the world. The hydrogen to carbon ratio in the process gas is as high as 8:1 or above, and the product - green high-purity direct reduction iron metallization rate reaches over 94%, meeting the international first-class standard; Compared to the same blast furnace, the long-term production process reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 800000 tons per year, with a reduction rate of 70%. The China Iron and Steel Industry Association pointed out in its congratulatory letter that this is a major breakthrough in the innovation of core and key technologies in hydrogen metallurgy, and an important milestone in the transformation of traditional "carbon metallurgy" to new "hydrogen metallurgy" in the history of Chinese and even world steel. It leads the steel industry into an era of "replacing coal with hydrogen" for smelting "green steel".

Approaching the world's first 1.2 million ton hydrogen metallurgy engineering demonstration project, it can be seen that behind it lies a breakthrough in the reconstruction of the energy consumption system, a responsibility to boldly explore and innovate in unmanned areas, and a collective effort to advance intelligent construction.

Refactoring the Energy Consumption System - Breaking the Ceiling of Carbon Reduction in Steel

In recent years, climate change has become a continuous focus of global attention, and countries are committed to promoting carbon reduction actions. As a major carbon emitter that has received significant attention, the traditional steel industry is facing increasingly severe carbon reduction tasks. The energy carrier of traditional steel production mainly comes from carbon elements, so the gas emissions of the steel industry are mainly carbon oxides. From a global perspective, in 2022, the carbon emissions of the global steel industry will be about 2.8 billion tons, accounting for about 8% of the global energy system emissions. China's steel industry contributes more than 60% of the global steel carbon emissions and about 15% of the national carbon emissions, making it the industry with the highest carbon emissions in China's manufacturing sector. It can be seen that the carbon reduction task in the steel industry is extremely arduous, and promoting carbon reduction in the steel industry is a key focus area for achieving China's "dual carbon" goals. After years of development, the production technology of China's steel industry has reached world-class level. The energy-saving and carbon reduction space centered on improving the efficiency of carbon energy utilization has become increasingly small, which means that the innovation of traditional process technology has almost reached the ceiling to significantly reduce carbon emissions in the long process production of blast furnaces.

On May 17, 2023, the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) officially came into effect, which means that multiple industries such as steel and cement will be subject to a "carbon tax". According to predictions, the export cost of China's steel industry may increase by 4% to 6%, roughly estimated to be between 200 million to 400 million US dollars. At the same time, the downstream steel industry is increasingly concerned about the carbon emissions of steel products. Automotive companies such as Mercedes Benz and BMW have requested steel suppliers to provide life cycle assessment reports for automotive sheet products and have put forward the requirement of "green steel". This means that if the carbon emissions of the steel industry cannot be reduced as soon as possible, it will not only directly affect the international competitiveness of steel products through "carbon cost increase", but also affect the green development of downstream manufacturing and construction industries through "carbon footprint". Therefore, in order to achieve breakthrough carbon emissions reduction in steel production, we must start from the source of energy. The new concept of reconstructing the energy consumption system for steel production, which is neither broken nor established, has pointed out a new direction for breaking the ceiling of low-carbon emission reduction in metallurgy.

In recent years, hydrogen energy has been rapidly developing as a green, clean, and efficient secondary energy source. If steel production achieves energy conversion from hydrogen to carbon, it will significantly reduce carbon emissions from the source, and even achieve "net zero carbon" emissions in steel production. The principle of metallurgical reduction reaction reflects that hydrogen is a highly efficient reducing agent. The diffusion rate of hydrogen is about 4 times that of carbon monoxide, and the diffusion rate of its reduced product water is about 1.5 times that of carbon dioxide. Therefore, hydrogen can reach the reaction interface through the fine pores of the ore faster than carbon monoxide, and the water vapor generated after reduction also diffuses faster than carbon dioxide. Hydrogen not only has a reducing effect on itself, but also has a catalytic effect on the reduction of carbon monoxide. It can be seen that hydrogen reduction is more efficient than carbon reduction, and the product of hydrogen reduction is water, without the production of greenhouse gases. If "hydrogen reduction" is used instead of "carbon reduction" in steel production, it can not only save heavy pollution processes such as sintering and coking, but also supplement China's insufficient scrap steel resources with its product - direct reduced iron, providing high-quality pure iron for high-quality steel. It is a pure raw material for electric furnace production of high-end high-quality steel and special steel, thereby improving the international competitiveness of China's high-end green low-carbon steel products.

Courageous Innovation in Unmanned Areas: A Disruptive Change Leading the Green Development of the World Steel Industry

In order to effectively seize the development opportunity of reconstructing the energy consumption system of steel production, MCC Jingcheng has teamed up with Hebei Iron and Steel Group to explore the use of hydrogen energy in the production process of steel metallurgy. But to develop hydrogen metallurgy, two prerequisites must be addressed.

One is that there must be abundant and inexpensive hydrogen resources. Hydrogen energy is a secondary energy source that cannot be directly extracted from underground sources like coal, oil, and natural gas. It must be produced through certain methods using other energy sources. Due to resource and energy endowments, China currently mainly produces hydrogen through fossil fuels, which are mainly applied in the chemical industry. As a steel joint venture, the coking process not only provides high-quality coke for blast furnaces, but also its by-product - coke oven gas - contains about 60% hydrogen gas. For hydrogen metallurgy, coke oven gas can meet the demand for gas sources well in terms of supply scale and economy. However, this is only a transitional approach to using coke oven gas for hydrogen production based on existing resources and energy endowments. The first phase of Zhangxuan Technology's 1.2 million ton hydrogen metallurgical engineering demonstration project has laid the foundation for achieving 100% green hydrogen vertical furnace direct reduction in the future. In the future, with the development of distributed energy generation and nuclear power industry, hydrogen production technology will rapidly advance. Relevant institutions predict that from 2025 to 2030, large-scale and inexpensive hydrogen will be widely used in the whole society, providing a stable gas source supply for the future development of hydrogen metallurgy.

Secondly, it is necessary to develop a complete set of processes and equipment as the process carrier. The modern steel industry has developed quite maturely. Currently, mature processes at home and abroad mainly include blast furnaces, smelting reduction, coal based and gas based direct reduction, etc. Among them, the blast furnace process mainly uses a carbon thermal reduction system mainly composed of coke and coal. Although smelting reduction and coal based direct reduction processes may not have coking and sintering processes, they are still carbon metallurgy with coal as the energy source. Although these processes can achieve local hydrogen rich injection, they fundamentally cannot change the properties of carbon metallurgy. The mature gas based direct reduction process is mainly concentrated in North Africa and the Middle East, using natural gas as the gas source. After reforming natural gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide is obtained for reduction and ironmaking, which is closest to the concept of hydrogen metallurgy from a principle perspective. Therefore, to achieve the energy reconstruction of "replacing carbon with hydrogen", choosing gas based direct reduction as the process carrier meets the innovative needs of hydrogen metallurgy technology.

After solving the gas source and determining the process flow, on November 22, 2019, the major event of "Hebei Iron and Steel Group and Italy's TENOVA joining hands with MCC Jingcheng to jointly develop and construct the world's first 1.2 million ton scale hydrogen metallurgy demonstration project" was publicly announced for the first time, and it was determined that Hebei Iron and Steel Group's world's first hydrogen metallurgy project aims to use coke oven gas to "self adjust" hydrogen production and produce green and high-quality direct reduced iron. The basic route is to innovate and develop the entire process of distributed green energy, low-cost hydrogen production, coke oven gas purification, hydrogen metallurgy, finished product transportation, carbon dioxide removal, etc., explore the best way for the world's steel industry to develop a low-carbon, even "zero carbon" economy, start from changing the energy supply structure, thoroughly solve the environmental pollution and carbon emissions problems generated in the steel metallurgy process, and lead the green and low-carbon transformation of steel smelting technology.

Driving Production with Intelligence - Promoting the Comprehensive Implementation of Green and Intelligent Manufacturing in Hydrogen Metallurgy Engineering

Today, based on the existing design results and digital twin technology, Hegang Group is establishing a digital model of hydrogen metallurgy intelligent control system, cloning the production line to the cloud, creating a new generation of intelligent control mode, and establishing a new concept of full life cycle operation and control.

In fact, at the beginning of the project construction, MCC Jingcheng and Hebei Iron and Steel Group injected digital genes into the design of the entire plant, relying on the coding system of hydrogen metallurgy and combining with MCC Jingcheng's BIM (Building Information Modeling) design experience to create a digital twin of the steel plant. At present, MCC Jingcheng and Hegang Group are working hard to build the first domestic hydrogen metallurgy full life cycle data coding system, laying the foundation for the comprehensive application of digital twins at the factory level, workshop level, and equipment level. The project is based on the basic idea of "one blueprint to manage to the end", realizing intelligent management of the entire life cycle of the hydrogen metallurgy production line from design, construction to operation, forming a multi-source data fusion application solution for the entire business system, and providing a unified platform for the control of production, quality, energy, environmental protection, safety, and equipment throughout the plant, achieving integrated control. The main idea of this project is to take automation, informatization, intelligence, and digitization as the guiding path, and use the digital twin maturity model as the evaluation standard to build the world's first hydrogen metallurgy intelligent application, achieving intelligent management covering the entire process, lifecycle, and business system.

One is to take design as the guide and simulate reality with virtuality. Based on the BIM design achievements of MCC Jingcheng and combined with digital twin technology, we will build a digital collaborative design platform that integrates engineering design and equipment design for enterprises, and simulate and emulate the entire production line to provide safe and efficient digital solutions for hydrogen metallurgy.

The second is based on delivery, reflecting reality through virtuality. Build a hydrogen metallurgy engineering data center, gather information from the entire process of design, procurement, and construction, construct a "network" data structure centered on "objects", create an enterprise asset database, and achieve centralized storage of information throughout the entire lifecycle of engineering construction (such as design, procurement, manufacturing, construction, installation, and commissioning), saving time from the entire design and construction process and improving construction efficiency.

The third is to use intelligence control as the bloodline and virtual control over reality. We have built DCS (Distributed Control System) and SIS (Safety Instrumented System) systems based on Emerson's DeltaV system to achieve automated operation of the production line and build a safety barrier for stable operation of the production line; We have established a complete set of digital models for heating furnaces, heat exchangers, preheaters, cooling and cleaning, compressors, combustion, cooling towers, vertical furnaces, external coolers, etc. Through real-time data and model calculations, intelligent control is achieved to help enterprises create unmanned and less manned production scenarios.

The fourth is to use data as the brain and use virtuality to predict reality. We have built an information architecture for steel enterprises, including ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, production and sales systems, real-time data procurement systems, equipment management systems, etc. We have comprehensively integrated production, quality, energy, environmental protection, safety, and equipment data, combined with big data analysis and artificial intelligence technology to achieve precise and intelligent decision-making, and continuously move towards the direction of virtual reality.

Hydrogen inspires green, intelligence connects the world, and energy creates the future. MCC Jingcheng and Hebei Iron and Steel Group will further assist hydrogen metallurgy engineering in advancing towards a green and intelligent direction of virtual and real symbiosis, and build Hebei Iron and Steel Group's Zhangxuan Technology into a world-class green, low-carbon, and intelligent hydrogen metallurgy short process demonstration enterprise. With the national metallurgical technology progress as its responsibility, it will continuously deepen the integration and innovation of hydrogen energy and steel, drive the formation of a new steel ecological industry chain, provide a new path and create new scenarios for the steel industry to transform its energy structure and achieve technological revolution, and embark on a sustainable and high-quality development path with Chinese green and intelligent manufacturing characteristics.