Cleveland-Cliffs to build East Chicago hydrogen pipeline
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In an effort to curb its carbon output, Cleveland-Cliffs is building a multimillion-dollar pipeline to send hydrogen to an East Chicago blast furnace, according to our partners at The Times of Northwest Indiana.
Blast Furnace No. 7 at Indiana Harbor Works in East Chicago will use the pipeline’s hydrogen instead of what blast furnaces have historically used: coke, a form of coal. The furnace is the largest in the Western Hemisphere with a production capacity of 5.5 million tons of iron a year.
“We’re an industry leader in clean hydrogen as a foundation of advanced steelmaking,” Forrester said at Purdue University Northwest in Hammond. “We’re proud of the progress we have made, achieving a 32% reduction in emissions compared to a 2017 baseline.”
Construction is ongoing for the East Chicago pipeline. Forrester told the Times that Cleveland-Cliffs is interested in sourcing hydrogen from multiple places. The company is not interested in building a pipeline to the Burns Harbor at this point, according to the publication.
The company said it did a successful hydrogen injection trial at a blast furnace at Middletown Works in Ohio that had no impact on product quality or efficiency.
The move comes as a coalition involving Indiana, Illinois and Michigan was one of seven groups announced last week to receive up to $1 billion in federal funding to develop a clean hydrogen hub.
Cleveland-Cliffs celebrated the announcement, with CEO Lourenco Goncalvez saying the move “marks the very beginning of a new era in steel producing.”