Sweden-based power company Vattenfall has announced that HYBRIT’s hydrogen storage at Svartöberget in Luleå has now been tested commercially on the electricity market. HYBRIT is a fossil-free steel joint venture between Vattenfall, Swedish specialty steel producer SSAB and Swedish iron ore producer LKAB.
The hydrogen storage was used for about a month to produce hydrogen from fossil-free electricity at the lowest possible cost. The hydrogen was delivered in a steady flow to SSAB. The test period will run until 2024, as SteelOrbis previously reported.
Fossil-free hydrogen is a prerequisite to be able to produce fossil-free steel, and, by adding storage, the variable cost of hydrogen production can be significantly reduced, by between 25 to 40 percent.
“LKAB will change the entire production of iron ore products to fossil-free sponge iron produced with hydrogen. We will need to produce over one million mt of hydrogen and consume over 70 TWh of fossil-free electricity per year when we have restructured the entire operation in 2050,” Stefan Savonen, energy and climate manager at LKAB, said.
