Primetals Technologies and Posco have signed a cooperation agreement to design and implement a HyREX demonstration plant at Posco’s facility in Pohang, South Korea. This initiative builds on a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in 2022 and aims to test and verify production processes while identifying the most cost-effective parameters.
As the global iron and steel industry seeks to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, hydrogen-based direct reduction technologies like HyREX offer an alternative to carbon-intensive blast furnaces. HyREX combines the FINEX direct reduction process with an electric smelting furnace (ESF) to produce liquid hot metal. Developed by Posco and Primetals Technologies since 1992, the FINEX process uses a cascade of fluidized-bed reactors to produce direct-reduced iron (DRI) from iron ore.
Unlike FINEX, which relies on reduction gas from coal gasification, HyREX uses hydrogen. This approach allows hot DRI to be further processed in the ESF, resulting in high-quality liquid hot metal with significantly lower carbon emissions. The HyREX demonstration plant will include an ore dryer, a cascade of fluidized-bed reactors, a hot DRI transport system, an ESF, a dedusting system, and facilities for metal tapping and slag granulation. By eliminating the need for a coke plant and the environmentally intensive sintering process, HyREX technology can utilize over 50pct of globally available iron ore grades.
