Sustainable Green Energy to “Real-Green-Steel”: new routes in the process engineering towards the direct reduction of minerals with green-hydrogen

The aim of this work is to drive research towards the synthesis of new advanced steel materials through the development of more effective and non-environment-impacting process routes. Actually, steel is majorly produced through the use of iron ore and carbon coke, accounting for a larger energy consumption (about 8% of worldwide energy consumed) and the greater CO2 emissions (ca. 7% of the global value). The direct reduction (DR) of iron ores with green hydrogen is an innovative process leading the steel production towards a net-zero emission. Therefore, the direct reduction of different iron base minerals has been performed in a laboratory micro-plant, concluding that both the amount and types of the impurities (non-ferrous oxides), as well as the textural properties of the minerals, can heavily affect the efficiency of the DR process.