From iron to e-fuels: ­Diversifying into the hydrogen industry

Everyone’s talking about hydrogen. Many businesses and industries are investigating ways to use green hydrogen as a clean alternative to fossil fuels, and some are further down the line than others. At SMS group, we’ve been actively advancing hydrogen-based solutions to help our steel-producing customers reach their carbon neutrality goals. However, our sustainability commitment extends beyond that: We’re also shaping the real-world use of hydrogen technology in other industries, such as developing sustainable e-fuels for hard-to-electrify sectors like aviation and enhancing our process know-how for the efficient production of green hydrogen.

These days, all our metals sector customers are, in one way or another, keen on decarbonizing their operations. As one of the largest industrial sources of CO₂ emissions, this is a significant challenge, indeed, but also a tremendous opportunity to exploit.

Why does hydrogen play such a vital role in this? Only hydrogen can replace carbon for metallurgical purposes and makes near-zero carbon steelmaking possible. Using one metric ton of green hydrogen in steel production saves around 26 metric tons of CO₂ compared with the traditional blast furnace route. However, until green hydrogen is readily available at a reasonable price and on a large scale, the economic realities differ in terms of how a plant can reduce its emissions for each enterprise. In the medium and long term, steel producers’ roadmaps to climate neutrality will consider replacing the conventional carbon-based blast furnace route with a hydrogen-based route using a direct reduction process. Some of our customers are already at that point, and we are very excited about our two flagship projects: a brownfield operation at thyssenkrupp Steel in Germany, and the greenfield development of the new H2 Green Steel plant in Sweden.

Further highlighting our commitment to green hydrogen integration technology, our partnership with Eletrobras will establish a 10 MW green hydrogen and oxygen production facility near a steel plant in Brazil, with studies for installation spanning twelve months. In the MultiPLHY project, we’re commissioning a hydrogen processing unit for the world’s first multi-megawatt high-temperature electrolyzer (HTE) system to supply over 60 kg/h of green hydrogen to a refinery’s hydrogen grid.

Our overall aim is to not only be involved in hydrogen generation and usage projects, but also to take an active stance in developing the infrastructure and gaining practical experience in diverse integration processes.

Our hydrogen strategy is rooted in the metals industry. It is where we come from and what we know best, and it is also where the most significant sustainability gains can be realized the fastest. Nevertheless, hydrogen has huge potential to play an important role in replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen-based synthetic fuels in hard-to-electrify sectors such as the aviation industry. This is where the partnership between Norsk e-Fuel and SMS group brand Paul Wurth comes in, as Paul Wurth S.A. has been contracted to engineer and design one of the world’s first industrial-scale e-fuel production sites located in Mosjøen, Norway. The country’s underutilized hydropower capacities produce abundant green electricity, which will be turned into hydrogen and then, together with CO₂, into renewable fuels that can be used in existing engines and infrastructures, prioritizing e-SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) for the aviation industry. The CO₂ for this process comes from biogenic sources and together with recycled CO₂ from biogenic waste gas streams becomes part of an industrial photosynthesis process. In the final steps of this process, sustainable aviation fuel is trans­ported to an airplane. Then, in the aircraft’s engine, the carbon contained in the fuel is released back into the atmosphere in the form of CO2. At this point, the “industrial photosynthesis” cycle closes as soon as the CO₂ is captured from the air again – no new CO₂ is released into the atmosphere through the CO₂ cycle.

The venture is already on solid economic ground, having recently closed significant offtake agreements from two international airlines. Norwegian Air and Cargolux Airlines International S.A. have already committed to purchasing fossil-free aviation fuel from Norsk e-Fuel.

Hydrogen technologies are an exciting step forward and hold great promise for industrial decarbonization. As with all innovative technologies, the key to their success lies in their performance in the marketplace. These technologies must not only prove effective in practical applications but also transform into economically viable products that deliver on their potential. As an industrial engineering company, this is where we see our role – harnessing our research, expertise, process know-how, and partnerships from the metals industry to create cost-effective hydrogen technology solutions for our customers and the industries we serve. Central to this approach is our hydrogen center of competence in Luxembourg, which spearheads hydrogen projects and conducts research and development around H₂ in green steel and Power to X or L applications.

Beyond our industrial activities, we have entered into an agreement with the University of Luxembourg to create and sponsor the Paul Wurth Chair in Energy Process Engineering. The chair aims to conduct cutting-edge research in hydrogen processing and related aspects of carbon-neutral industrial processes. The team attached to the chair will also teach at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. In addition, the chair will participate in outreach activities to stimulate interest in key challenges in the field of engineering.