At a steel plant in Lulea, Sweden, workers make the world’s most essential construction material the old fashioned way: piling iron ore and coke, a kind of coal-derived fuel, in a huge blast furnace, heating the mixture to enormous temperatures, and then “tapping” the cauldron of molten metal, which sends a stream of white-hot pig iron—and showers of sparks—spilling out along a sluiceway.
But less than a mile away, the plant’s owner, SSAB, is piloting a less dramatic steelmaking process at a new facility. “It doesn’t look that spectacular,” says Martin Pei, executive vice president and chief technology officer at the Swedish steelmaker. “You don’t see very much either, because it’s all automatically-controlled.”
It’s spectacular in a different way, though. Traditional blast furnaces emit huge amounts of CO2. But SSAB’s HYBRIT pilot plant—built in collaboration with Swedish state-owned mining company LKAB and state-owned power company Vattenfall—emits nothing but water vapor when it refines iron ore. Last summer, the facility produced iron for the world’s first fossil-fuel-free steel, blazing a trail towards decarbonizing one of the world’s most heavily-polluting industries.
