Carbon Footprint Assessment of Hydrogen and Steel

Julian Suer, Marzia Traverso and Nils Jäger
Additional contact information
Julian Suer: Institute of Sustainability in Civil Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany
Marzia Traverso: Institute of Sustainability in Civil Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany
Nils Jäger: Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe AG, 47166 Duisburg, Germany

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 24, 1-20

Abstract: Hydrogen has the potential to decarbonize a variety of energy-intensive sectors, including steel production. Using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, the state of the art is given for current hydrogen production with a focus on the hydrogen carbon footprint. Beside the state of the art, the outlook on different European scenarios up to the year 2040 is presented. A case study of the transformation of steel production from coal-based towards hydrogen- and electricity-based metallurgy is presented. Direct reduction plants with integrated electric arc furnaces enable steel production, which is almost exclusively based on hydrogen and electricity or rather on electricity alone, if hydrogen stems from electrolysis. Thus, an integrated steel site has a demand of 4.9 kWh of electric energy per kilogram of steel. The carbon footprint of steel considering a European sustainable development scenario concerning the electricity mix is 0.75 kg CO 2 eq/kg steel in 2040. From a novel perspective, a break-even analysis is given comparing the use of natural gas and hydrogen using different electricity mixes. The results concerning hydrogen production presented in this paper can also be transferred to application fields other than steel.

Keywords: carbon footprint assessment; power production; hydrogen; direct reduction plant; electric arc furnace (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/24/9468/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/24/9468/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:24:p:9468-:d:1002795

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().