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Innovation Centre for Industrial Transformation and Emissions

INCITE starts work with the iron and steel sector through site visits in Sweden

  • 10 Oct 2024
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<span>INCITE starts work with the iron and steel sector through site visits in Sweden</span>

The past month of June, we launched the Innovation Centre for Industrial Transformation and Emissions. More recently, in mid-September, the INCITE team was invited to Sweden by Jerkontoret (Swedish Steel Industry Association) to a half-day seminar specially organised to prepare relevant Swedish stakeholders (e .g. industry, research and technology organisations, technology providers and government) for the upcoming work and collaboration with INCITE.  Jerkontoret also set up an extensive program enabling the INCITE team to visit different projects with first-of-a-kind industrial  installations developing innovative techniques aimed to help the steel industry in achieving carbon neutrality and becoming more circular.

The industrial installations visited were as follows: 

  • Kanthal, a technology provider specialised in electric heating applications, in particular for the ferrous metal processing industry. 
  • HYBRIT, an industrial facility that has been conducting trials at semi-industrial scale on the direct reduction of iron ore (DRI) using 100% hydrogen. 
  • Stegra (previously known as H2GreenSteel), which is currently building a full-scale entirely new integrated steelworks in Boden for production of green hydrogen, green iron and green steel. The installation shall start operating in 2026! 

The INCITE team also met with the CEO of Greeniron and its team in Stockholm, a company that developed an innovative process employing fossil-free hydrogen as a reducing agent for the recycling of residues from the mining, steel and foundry sectors. This process will significantly increase circularity in those sectors. 

Site visits and direct engagement with stakeholders are key priorities for INCITE, as they help get first-hand information from experts about the degree of maturity and the environmental performance of key innovative techniques for e.g. decarbonisation, circular economy.

Many thanks to Jernkontoret (Eva Blixt), Nicolai Schaaf, Gunilla Hyllander, Edward Murray and all the organisations for hosting us.