The year 2021 was Hyundai Steel’s most lucrative yet, with the company recording total sales of USD 19 billion and operating profits of USD 2 billion by the end of the year.
The adoption of carbon neutrality as an imperative worldwide is prompting the global steel industry to accelerate and evolve in its response. Steelmaking using hydrogen reduction technology, scrap iron, and electric arc furnaces enables steelmakers to inch towards carbon neutrality, and is an industry trend that Hyundai Steel is fully onboard with. Earlier this year, Hyundai Steel formed a Carbon Neutrality Division to respond to paradigm shifts in the steel industry and to transform its production systems.
Dedicated to the successful implementation of Hyundai Steel’s carbon neutrality systems, the Carbon Neutrality Division designs steel production systems in line with global standards, oversees the company’s carbon neutrality strategies, and applies carbon neutrality technologies to steel production.
Hyundai Steel currently has two carbon neutrality strategies. The first is process carbon neutrality. Process improvement, low-carbon fuels, and other innovations reduce the volumes of carbon dioxide generated in steelmaking processes to gradually neutralize total emissions. There is also the added benefit of reduced market impact of increased production costs resulting from the implementation of new technologies for carbon neutrality.
The second strategy is the development of low-carbon products. Hyundai Steel plans to pioneer new markets by being the first in the steel industry to supply new carbon-neutral products, a maneuver that will simultaneously reduce the time invested in process carbon neutrality. The development and manufacturing of low-carbon products will be an opportunity for Hyundai Steel to try out different carbon neutrality technologies and devise a production system conversion without major setbacks.
A veteran steelmaker with experience in both blast furnace and electric arc furnace steelmaking (integrated steelmaking), Hyundai Steel is making the carbon-zero switch with innovative electric arc furnace technologies, a project entitled “Hy-Cube” (Hy3).
Hy-Cube is a hybrid production system powered by Hyundai Steel’s hydrogen technology and hydrogen-based renewable energy technology, the linchpin of it being the hydrogen-arc (Hy-Arc) furnace producing high-quality steel plates for carbon-neutral carmaking. Hyundai Steel’s Hy-Arc technology is a product of the crossover of its electric arc furnace and blast furnace steelmaking.
The Hy-Arc technology’s benefits include AI-enabled management of scrap iron (the primary material in electrical arc furnace steelmaking), mixed use of hydrogen-reduced iron and carbon-neutral molten iron for greater flexibility in materials, and steelmaking that brings out the best qualities of materials. Hy-Arc steelmaking will produce both electric arc furnace products (long steel products) and blast furnace products (steel plates). Hyundai Steel plans to commit its technologies and resources to the development of its carbon neutrality technology to ultimately become a supplier of only carbon-neutral steel products, without any sacrifices in product quality.