Calix – ZESTY Green Iron Demonstration Plant

Summary

Need

The transition to low-emissions steelmaking is both a significant threat and opportunity for Australia. Conventionally, blast furnaces use metallurgical coke to heat and reduce iron ore to make metal iron, before further processing into steel.

Globally, steelmaking accounts for 7-8% of global CO2 emissions, with over 80% of these emissions resulting from the reduction of iron ore to metal iron in a blast furnace. An alternative, known as Direct Reduced Iron (DRI), can replace coal in ironmaking. When renewable hydrogen and electricity are used (HDRI), this approach can produce near-zero emissions metal iron.

Australia is the world’s largest iron ore producer. To ensure the future viability of Australian iron ore in a decarbonising global economy, low-carbon steelmaking processes must be compatible with the low-medium grade hematite/goethite ores that make up the bulk of Australia’s exports. HDRI technologies must also minimise costs to be competitive with conventional carbon-intensive methods.

Action

Calix’s ZESTY is a HDRI technology that aims to provide lowest cost pathways to green iron and steel by:
• Enabling flexible operations compatible with variable renewable energy sources
• Enabling theoretical minimum hydrogen use of 54kg per tonne of iron
• Removing the need for ore pelletisation, and
• Enabling the use of fines and lower-grade ores.

Following successful pilot-scale trials, the Project aims to:

1. Construct, commission and operate a 30,000 tonne per annum HDRI ZESTY Green Iron Demonstration Plant.
2. Deliver a Pre-FEED / FEED study for a commercial scale ZESTY plant.

The Demonstration Plant is designed to enable toll processing of multiple ore types and grades from a range of producers both within Australia and internationally. As well as facilitate testing of the HDRI or Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI) product by multiple steelmakers using different steelmaking routes.

This testing is intended to assist in progressing the viability of Australian iron ore in a low emissions steel value chain, support the development of a green iron industry in Australia, and support global deployment of the technology.

This aims to demonstrate ZESTY’s potential to provide flexible decarbonisation pathways, including substituting a portion of the iron ore charge to a blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) in the near term, and longer-term low emissions steel production via an Electric Smelting Furnace (ESF) / Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) route.