Shifting gears

Alexander Fleischanderl* has always been passionate about ‘cleaning things up’ and following on from a year since his appointment as head of green steel at Primetals, the drive to make the world a greener place has never held a more urgent significance. By

Catherine Hill**

TO the wider public, the terms ‘sustainable’ and ‘steel’ aren’t likely neighbours, with the steel industry being one of the largest culprits of CO2 emissions, water pollution, and energy consumption – with all climbing, until recently, alongside its rampant rise in production. In terms of environmental impact, blast furnaces are top of the hit list-churning out 90% of the industry’s total emissions, and causing catastrophic damage to the surrounding wildlife and landscape. Despite this, steel can – and must – be part of a sustainable future. Enter Alexander Fleischanderl, head of green steel at Primetals, and driver of a task force that cracks the code of making one of the world’s most renowned ‘dirty’ industries, clean, green, and fit for the next generation.

Since his appointment as head of green steel just over a year ago, Alexander Fleischanderl has been reflecting on the ‘passion for innovation’ he sees in his team; with all 20 members ‘continuing the work [he] did 15 years back’ in the sustainability sector. ‘‘I’ve been working in this space many years more,’’ Fleischanderl told me, ‘‘going back to during my PhD, I studied municipal waste incineration plants, so a completely different thing to green steel, but there I developed a new system for municipal waste, so the sustainability area of heavy industry is not new to me, it’s always been my passion.’’

And it’s not just about decarbonizing the industry; for Fleischanderl, the changes taking place in global steelmaking must and will account for a ‘broader context in terms of sustainability’, dealing with all aspects of the chain, and forcing change from the inside out.

But what changes have taken place in the last decade? According to Fleischanderl, it’s all ‘in the private sector – starting from 2019 with the announcement of the European Green Deal in 2019’. ‘‘Before,’’ said Fleischanderl, ‘‘there was always a ‘laugh in the backyard’ when I was promoting topics of bi-product treatment, heat recovery, and emissions reduction… the view was that ‘it’s not paying off, and it might be possible, but nobody’s interested’’. This led to a ‘triggering point’, he continued, saying that when the deal formed, the industry came to represent the sustainability focus that we see in so many sectors today.

Maintaining traction towards a sustainable industry is a separate matter, however, with Fleischanderl citing two main systems in place to incentivize the market; penalties, and premiums.

‘‘People are more prepared now to pay a premium, and that is a good thing, because a system that relies on penalties and taxes is not the best,’’ he said, adding that the ‘driving force’ for change has to be the premium, given that green steel is more expensive, and likely will remain so for the next few decades. Motivation for companies to purchase green steel hasn’t always maintained the market though, with Fleischanderl referring to the driving force of ‘ESG topics’ creating a demand for netzero that companies are bound to adhere to. ‘‘[Companies] need ‘green stories’ for their shareholders, so all of them have made their strategies. It’s wise doing this, otherwise they will miss the train’’.

The ’train’ of sustainable action is not so smooth-running, however, due to complex conditions in the raw materials market. ‘’Unfortunately, there are not so many established mechanisms to manage raw materials like scrap’’, Fleischanderl said, adding that the ‘whole of Europe is exporting large amounts of scrap’, with scrap dealers having not established technologies to clean the scrap. In spite of this, Fleischanderl concedes that progress is being made in terms of producing ‘advanced high strength steel’, but this only furthers the importance of controlling scrap - ‘‘copper is the real enemy of advanced high strength steel – this is one of the focused topics for Primetals… we are developing intelligent sensors and an online analysis system to identify and remove certain pieces from scrap to get crafted, clean scrap’’. According to Fleischanderl, the same goes for iron ore – with the market due to see ‘quite a challenge in the future’. ‘‘On the one hand, it’s good that more scrap requires less iron ore, but it’s a matter of fact that we will see less blast furnaces and coking plants in the next three decades – that will leave a lot of lower grade iron ore in the market’’. The solution, said Fleischanderl, is to utilize lower grade iron ore with DRI technology, and he believes that this will become a ‘major trend’ as a result of its necessity. An example of this utilization of DRI technology exists in Primetal’s HyRex process; a steelmaking method that manufactures molten metal using iron ore fines and hydrogen, based on Korean steelmaker POSCO’s FINEX fluidized reduction technology. Through this process, two sustainable goals can be achieved in one swoop; the utilization of lower grade iron ore, and the replacement of fossil fuels with hydrogen, meaning that water is generated as a bi-product rather than CO2

The use of hydrogen is another example of a ‘major trend’, in Fleischanderl’s eyes, but the logistical side remains a tricky knot to untangle; with issues of liquifying, shipment, and cost being significant concerns for an urgent transition. ‘‘Unfortunately, as we look to the ‘hydrogen generation’, it’s always promoted that we look to regions where renewable energy is cheap, but the cost is still there – and the logistical cost is significant. The truth is even that if we’re optimistic, we end up with no less than $6 per kg of hydrogen if you deliver it over the fence for the next few years. If we compare that to natural gas, which is tricky because prices are unstable, with the pre-Ukrainian war price, it requires around $1 per kg of hydrogen delivered to the steel mill to stay at the same cost level’’. In short, the major concern, says Fleischanderl, is on the ‘pace of establishing a hydrogen eco-system at a reasonable price level’. Solutions to the issue of pricing are not going to be smallfry either – with Fleischanderl gesturing to the possibility of ‘the relocation of the industry’. ‘‘There are simply more favourable producers in the world in terms of green iron, like the Middle East, Australia, Chile, USA and Canada, Norway, and Spain. If we look at the Middle East and Australia where a lot of iron ore is, you avoid the transport of hydrogen – you could look into iron hubs at a large scale that ship