On May 20, Hyundai Steel President and CEO An Tong-il and the President of the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) Kim Jong-nam signed a carbon neutrality MOU to develop technology for CCUS (carbon capture, utilization, and storage), hydrogen production, and energy efficiency improvement. The MOU was signed at the KIER headquarters in Daejeon.
Hyundai Steel has steadily promoted technological collaboration in the greenhouse gas and energy sectors to establish a low-carbon production system with the KIER in 2016. Recently, carbon neutrality has become an important issue for corporate sustainability, and the carbon-neutral MOU for the energy and environmental sectors was signed to actively respond to the matter.
Based on this collaboration, Hyundai Steel plans to use the KIER’s leading energy technologies to improve steel mill equipment performance and optimize management. In addition, it is expected that technology will be quickly developed to realize carbon neutrality in the mid to long-term for basic technologies, such as hydrogen production, CCUS, and carbon-free combustion, for green steel.
Through the MOU, Hyundai Steel is especially looking forward to the production technology development of “blue hydrogen” that will change the composition of the byproduct gas to double hydrogen production compared to commonly used technologies. It is expected that this collaboration will accelerate the securing of technology to produce large amounts of hydrogen used to make “hydrogen direct reduced iron.”
In addition, various elemental technologies related to CCUS that are possessed by the KIER, such as the CO2 collection technology and other product transfer technology using CO2, will be actively examined for use in the steel process.
“We will continue to collaborate with the KIER to advance verification technology related to energy and the environment. As carbon neutrality is the most important aspect for a company to grow sustainably, we will pursue a range of technological collaborations and actively invest in building a carbon-neutral environment for the steel industry,” said CEO An Tong-il.