Hydrogen Direct Reduction of Iron Ore

Green steel starts with swapping the reductant: instead of burning coke to strip oxygen from iron ore inside a blast furnace, a hydrogen direct-reduction (H2-DRI) shaft furnace pushes hot hydrogen gas up through a descending bed of iron-oxide pellets — the same route pioneered by projects like HYBRIT. This simulation renders each pellet with a real shrinking-core model: an outer oxide shell and an inner metallic-iron core whose radius recedes according to Arrhenius reaction kinetics as the pellet falls through the reduction zone. Adjust the furnace temperature, hydrogen excess ratio and pellet descent speed to see metallization change in real time, or switch to the blast-furnace route to compare the CO2 this process avoids by producing water vapor instead.