Metso opens DRI Smelting Furnace pilot plant in Finland
- 27 October 2024
Metso senior smelting manager Timo Haimi will have some news hot off the proverbial steel press when he talks about green iron smelting technology for Australian iron ores at IMARC 2024 in Sydney this week.
Haimi arrives from Finland, where Metso has just announced the opening of its state-of-the-art DRI (direct reduced iron) Smelting Furnace pilot facility at Pori in the country’s west.
The new facility enables customer-specific pilot-scale testing to demonstrate the applicability and results of industrial-scale DRI smelting with Metso’s Outotec DRI Smelting Furnace technology, supporting what the manufacturer says is rapidly increasing demand for reliable testing as iron and steel makers transition to emissions-free smelting.
“This new pilot facility is yet another example of Metso’s cutting-edge solutions that support the minerals and metals processing industry in the quest to implement new sustainable technologies,” said Metso smelting vice president, Jyrki Makkonen.
“Metso’s DRI Smelting Furnace substitutes traditional blast furnaces used in iron and steel making and enables a significant reduction of emissions when combined with a direct reduction plant.
With the pilot facility, Metso can reliably test various types of customer materials for industrial scale-up.
Speaking with Mining Beacon recently (https://miningbeacon.com/industry/applied-innovation-key-to-speeding-green-steel-shift-timo-haimi), Haimi said the DRI Smelting Furnace was one of the company’s breakthrough technologies for decarbonising the iron and steel industry.
It could be integrated with Metso’s hydrogen-based Circored process or other direct reduction processes.
“The DRI Smelting Furnace is based on the same proven technologies that we have been using for decades in multiple smelting projects, but for different metals. We are already processing hundreds of tonnes of feed materials in our smelters,” Haimi told Mining Beacon.
“So only the feed material, the DRI, is new for the process, which is why we are doing internal and external pilot testwork to prove this process.
“But compared to other new technologies we are well advanced.
“The road to a one million tonnes per annum [DRI Smelting Furnace] plant is not far away.”
Timo Haimi talks green iron smelting and potential applications for Australian iron ores on Wednesday at 12.55pm in the Caterpillar Energy Transition & Decarbonisation Theatre and returns to the theatre on Thursday for a panel discussion on Australia’s strategic steps to becoming a green superpower.
