The laboratory will expand the use of hydrogen in all 28 tuyeres of the blast furnace, the company said. According to a press release from thyssenkrupp, the “objective of the research is — amongst others — investigating the influence of the industrial use of hydrogen on the metallurgical processes in the blast furnace and determining parameters for the efficient use of reducing agents. The overall aim is to establish the use of hydrogen as bridging technology for the technical CO₂ reduction in existing blast furnaces.”
 
In addition to the expansion of hydrogen in the blast furnace operations at Duisburg, to ensure the continuous supply of hydrogen, the plant’s internal infrastructure will be prepared for a large-scale industrial supply of hydrogen. thyssenkrupp’s partner in the project, Air Liquide, will build a pipeline which will be about 6 km long and will link the steel plant in Duisburg with Air Liquide’s production network.
 
“We are now starting to prepare our plant infrastructure for the large-scale industrial use of hydrogen. With the pipeline link to the existing hydrogen infrastructure of Air Liquide, we are giving another impetus for ramping up the production of green hydrogen as quickly as possible, because there is a demand for it,” said Arnd Köfler, thyssenkrupp Steel’s chief technical officer. “With H2Stahl we combine two phases of our climate strategy: on the one hand the industrialization of hydrogen use in existing blast furnace-based technology routes already involving significant CO₂ reductions in the production process, and on the other hand the preparation of the direct reduction process by building up the infrastructure and thoroughly preparing the technological process,” Köfler added.
 
Read more on the project here.