Hyundai Steel unveils steel sheets with 30% reduction in carbon emissions

South Korean steelmaker Hyundai Steel Co. announced Tuesday it succeeded in the pilot manufacturing of advanced auto steel sheets using an electric furnace.

Thanks to the electric furnace, carbon emissions were reduced by more than 30% when compared to a conventional method that uses iron ore and coal in furnaces.

Direct-reduced iron (DRI) is produced from the direct reduction of iron ore into metallic iron by the way of decreasing gas or elemental carbon produced from natural gas or coal. 

By using ultra-high-tension steel-rolling technology for automobiles and refining technology with a special steel electric furnace that can control fine components, Hyundai Steel claims it has produced 1.0 gigapascal (GPa) grade steel sheets capable of withstanding 100 kilograms of load per unit area.

This marks the first time in the world that 1.0 GPa grade steel sheets have been manufactured using an electric furnace. 

The commercialization of the steel sheets is yet to be decided. 

A blast furnace uses powdered iron ore and coal. 

A low-carbon electric furnace, in contrast, only uses direct-reducing iron and scraps of steel. In other words, the lack of need for coal makes electric furnaces more environmentally friendly.

Hyundai Steel previously unveiled a plan to produce low-carbon and high-quality steel products through its electric furnace-based carbon-neutral steel production system named Hy-Cube.

The steelmaking arm of Hyundai Motor Group is headquartered in Incheon and Seoul and manufactures a whole gamut of products – ranging from H-beams, rails, and stainless cold-rolled sheets. 

Write to Ik-Hwan Kim at lovepen@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.