tkH2Steel: A 2.5-Million-Tonne Direct Reduction Plant Inside a Working Mill

thyssenkrupp is building a direct reduction plant the size of forty football pitches inside an integrated steelworks that never stops running. That constraint, not the technology, is what makes tkH2Steel hard.

Project Scope

The plant will produce 2.5 million tonnes of direct reduced iron a year at the Duisburg works. SMS group holds the EPC order for the DR plant, two melters and auxiliary systems at more than 1.8 billion euros, the largest single order in that company’s history, against total project investment above 2 billion euros. Midrex Technologies of Charlotte supplies the direct reduction process, and Jacobs runs construction site organization and management.

The two melters are the piece that makes the retrofit work. They convert DRI into a liquid feed the existing basic oxygen steelmaking and rolling assets can take, so thyssenkrupp does not have to build a parallel downstream mill alongside the one it already owns. The plant runs on natural gas during transition and shifts to roughly 143,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year from 2029.

Why It Matters

Primary steelmaking is one of the few industrial processes where cutting emissions means demolishing the process rather than improving it. A blast furnace cannot be tuned below its own chemistry. The DR plant cuts more than 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year once it is running, and roughly 2 billion euros in German federal and North Rhine-Westphalia state aid backs it, approved by the European Commission.

The honest caveat is the hydrogen. thyssenkrupp paused its green hydrogen tender over pricing and has built possible ramp-up delays into its procurement concept, which means the plant may run on natural gas longer than the 2029 date implies. That does not make the capital wasted, because a gas-fed DR plant still beats a blast furnace on emissions. It does mean the headline figure is a ceiling rather than a schedule.

Project Team & Details