Thyssenkrupp Nucera, a German-Italian joint venture, will supply H2 Green Steel, a Swedish renewable energy steel start-up, with more than 700 MW of water electrolysis capacity. More than 30 electrolysers will be installed in Europe’s first commercial green steel mill in Boden, Sweden. With the addition of the electrolysers, the Boden facility will become the first in the world to have a gigawatt-scale production capacity. It will be facilitated by Thyssenkrupp Nucera’s “scalum” model alkaline water electrolysis modules. Scheduled to begin production in 2025, the Boden plant will produce 2.5 million tonnes per annum (tpa) of green steel, with the aim of scaling up to five million by 2030.
At the Boden plant, the hydrogen produced by the electrolysers will be used on-site to reduce iron ore down to sponge iron for use as feedstock for green steelmaking. H2 estimates that steel made at the Boden plant will see a 95 per cent reduction in emissions when compared with traditional steel making methods. Additionally, Thyssenkrupp Nucera and Brazilian company Unigel reached an agreement to scale up their green hydrogen plant’s water electrolysis capacity from 60 MW to 240 MW. At the end 2023, Brazil’s first industrial-scale green hydrogen factory is expected to start producing 10,000 tpa of green hydrogen and 60,000 tpa of green ammonia with an initial 60 MW offering.
In February 2023, H2 Green Steel begun production at Europe’s first green steel mill in Boden, northern Sweden. By 2025, the company intends to begin producing steel using hydrogen in place of coal. Green steel would be produced by reacting hydrogen with iron ore, yielding just water vapour. H2 Green Steel would produce its own green hydrogen from a nearby river. The Lule River’s hydropower and nearby wind parks would supply the area’s renewable energy requirements for the plant’s operation and electrolysis, respectively.
