LIBERTY Steel Group, part of Sanjeev Gupta’s sustainable industry leader GFG Alliance, has signed an MOU with Paul Wurth and SHS – Stahl-Holding-Saar (SHS) to assess the building and operating of an industrial-sized, hydrogen-based steel making plant at Dunkerque in France.

The pan-European partnership will work together on a project to incorporate a 2 MM metric t Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) plant, with an integrated 1 GW capacity hydrogen electrolysis production unit, next to GFG’s ALVANCE Aluminium Dunkerque site. The DRI plant will initially use a mix of hydrogen and natural gas as the reductant to produce DRI and hot-briquetted iron (HBI), before transitioning to using 100% hydrogen once the electrolysis production unit is complete. The DRI/HBI produced will primarily be used in the electric arc furnace of LIBERTY Ascoval in France but any surplus will be used at LIBERTY’s Ostrava and Galati integrated steelworks as well as the SHS-group’s Dillinger and Saarstahl plants in Germany,

LIBERTY has been working with Paul Wurth and SHS on the technical and economic viability of the project since early last year. Now that initial feasibility work has proved successful the partners have signed a MoU which covers two phases:

• Phase 1 – will improve the accuracy of the project’s commercial and technical feasibility including the reducing gas mix, potential partners (energy supply, hydrogen production and operation, DRI/HBI equipment) and funding opportunities. This phase is expected to take around 12 weeks; and
• Phase 2 – deliver the level of detail required (technically and financially) for the effective implementation of the project. This phase will be determined as part of Phase 1.

Between them the partners are focused on developing technology which will allow the steel industry to achieve its ambitious green targets, with LIBERTY undertaking carbon neutral programs worldwide as part of its ambition to be carbon neutral by 2030.  

Paul Wurth is a Luxembourg-based company, and member of the SMS group. Through its partnership with Sunfire, a German technology provider which develops electrolyzers for efficient hydrogen generation, Paul Wurth is looking to drive the maturity of this technology for industrial application. SHS – with both companies Dillinger and Saarstahl – is a German steel producer. The SHS-group is dedicated to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and is committed to producing iron and steel with a reduced CO2 footprint.

The partners will consider using other hydrogen producers as part of the project.