Subodh Pandey, VP Technology, R&D, NMB and Graphene, Tata Steel
In April this 12 months, Tata Steel put out a quick announcement stating it had “entered into definitive agreements with Paul Wurth, SA (Luxembourg), part of SMS Group GmbH, for implementation of the world’s first EASyMelt (electrically assisted syngas smelter) technology”.
Behind the jargon lies an bold try to sort out one of many hardest issues in industrial decarbonisation: How to scale back emissions from current blast furnaces with out changing the furnaces altogether?
The blast furnace stays the dominant means of manufacturing iron globally. EASyMelt modifies the furnace to assist use the gases emitted in the course of the varied segments of metal making to convert iron ore to iron. This considerably reduces dependence on coke, the indispensable ingredient in metal making that can be liable for a lot of the carbon dioxide emissions from metal vegetation.
However, the method of manufacturing coke from coal — heating metallurgical coal in coke ovens — can be wealthy in hydrogen and methane.
Tata Steel believes EASyMelt may supply a pathway to decreasing coke consumption whereas retaining a lot of the prevailing steel-making infrastructure.
Subodh Pandey, VP Technology, R&D, NMB and Graphene, advised businessline that EASyMelt represents a mix of three course of enchancment applied sciences which were demonstrated individually elsewhere however by no means built-in in this fashion earlier than.
The first step is dry reforming, which creates the decreasing fuel wanted by the blast furnace.
An built-in metal plant produces a number of gases. One of them is coke oven fuel, generated in the course of the manufacturing of coke from coal. Rather than being merely burnt as gas, coke oven fuel can be utilized as a chemical feedstock as a result of it incorporates massive portions of hydrogen and methane. “Coke oven gas is gold,” mentioned Pandey.
The methane in coke oven fuel is reacted with carbon dioxide from blast furnace fuel in a dry reformer. The response converts these gases into synthesis fuel (syngas), a mix primarily containing carbon monoxide and hydrogen — the very gases that assist scale back iron ore (by driving out the oxygen in the ore).
In impact, a fuel that might in any other case comprise a major quantity of carbon dioxide is transformed right into a recent stream of decreasing gases.
The second course of is shaft injection. In a standard blast furnace, most decreasing gases enter from the underside and journey upwards. Shaft injection introduces the newly produced decreasing fuel greater up in the furnace.
This permits the iron ore burden to start dropping oxygen earlier in its journey by the furnace, decreasing the chemical work wanted in the most well liked area beneath.
The third course of is tuyere injection. Tuyeres are water-cooled nozzles situated close to the underside of the blast furnace, by which scorching gases are usually blown into the furnace. This is the zone the place coke combustion generates excessive temperatures and the carbon monoxide required for iron making.
By injecting decreasing gases by the tuyeres, EASyMelt provides carbon monoxide and hydrogen instantly to the area the place discount is most intensive. This reduces the necessity for coke to generate these gases contained in the furnace.
Thermal shift
“The idea is that, instead of making all the reducing gases inside the furnace using coke, we make them outside and inject them back in,” Pandey defined. The “electrically assisted” element of EASyMelt refers to the use of electrically generated warmth to increase the temperature of the decreasing gases earlier than they’re injected into the blast furnace. In a standard furnace, the warmth stability is maintained largely by carbon-based reactions involving coke. By shifting part of the thermal requirement to electrical energy, EASyMelt seeks to reduce the reliance on carbon for each chemical discount and warmth technology.
The firm’s board has authorised an funding of ₹2,500 crore to modify a blast furnace at its Jamshedpur facility for the deployment of the EASyMelt technology.
Pandey, nevertheless, cautioned that the coke discount determine is an expectation, which shall be examined by the venture. “Our bet is that coke consumption should fall from 440 kg per tonne of hot metal to 220 kg,” he mentioned. That would suggest practically 50 per cent discount in coke consumption, if achieved.
EASyMelt was developed by SMS Group, the worldwide gear provider, which approached Tata Steel with the technology.
“We had the appetite to try out this new approach,” Pandey mentioned.
The Jamshedpur venture may be the start of a wider rollout inside Tata Steel’s operations. Pandey mentioned he believed that round 20 per cent of the corporate’s blast furnaces — corresponding to 4-5 million tonnes of scorching metallic — may probably be modified to undertake the EASyMelt strategy. The attractiveness of the technology lies exactly in this risk — decreasing emissions from current belongings, fairly than ready for substitute with newer applied sciences.
EASyMelt is Tata Steel’s second low-carbon pathway to metal manufacturing. The firm earlier labored on HIsarna (learn ‘The molten magic inside Tata Steel’s HIsarna guess’ in businessline dated April 20, 2026), another iron-making route it developed in collaboration with European companions.
Unlike EASyMelt, which modifies an current blast furnace, HIsarna seeks to exchange the standard blast furnace-coke oven route altogether. It combines ore preparation and iron discount in a cyclone converter furnace, eliminating the necessity for coke ovens and sinter vegetation and producing a concentrated carbon dioxide stream, which may probably be captured and saved.
(The author visited the Tata Steel manufacturing unit in Jamshedpur on the invitation of the corporate)
Published on July 27, 2026