Rio Tinto pumps $143 mn into 'bioiron' facility to shore up ESG credentials

Anglo-Australian resources giant Rio Tinto has announced recently that it would build an R&D facility in Western Australia for a low-carbon steelmaking process that uses agricultural by-products such as wheat straw and sugarcane to reduce iron ore. The investment for the project is $143 million. Following the success of a small-scale pilot plant in Germany, Rio has embarked on full-scale development of the 'bioiron' facility.

What the global mining giant is aiming to put into practical use is a low-carbon steelmaking process. Specifically, biomass (biological resources) will be used as a reducing material for iron ore, and reduced iron is produced by heating with microwave energy.

In the production of reduced iron, it is common to use iron ore with low impurities or gangue in metallurgical parlance. For this reason, future decarbonisation processes using hydrogen are expected to utilise iron ore from North and South America. Rio Tinto has in mind the use of iron ore mined and produced at its own mines in Western Australia (Pilbara ore) in its empirical research on bioiron.

The research facility will be built in the Rockingham Industrial Zone close to Perth, the capital of Western Australia. It will be an experimental facility close to commercial scale and the company aims for trial operations in 2026.

Rio's initiatives in steel decarbonisation

The global miner aims to achieve net-zero emissions from its operations (Scope 1 and 2) by 2050, while also supporting many of its customers and suppliers to meet their emissions targets (Scope 3).

• Rio aims to address the long-time steelmaking challenge of significantly increasing the usage of lump in blast furnaces, while reducing overall cost and carbon emissions. Over the past many years, more than 20 major Chinese steel mills have adopted a similar approach
  
  
• Rio has extended its long-standing partnership with China Baowu to explore a range of new projects that will address one of the biggest challenges faced by the industry - developing a low-carbon pathway for low-to-medium grade iron ores. Notably, major Australian miners have thrown their weight behind ESF technology in order to ensure continued usage of Pilbara iron ore
  
  

Outlook

BigMint believes the proposed pathway of using biomass resources for reduction of iron ore can possibly reduce about 90- 95% of ironmaking emissions if:

• the proposed microwave heating of biomass-derived resources, as indicated by Rio, takes place with renewably generated electricity rather than thermal heating
  
  
• the production of biomass-based resources (through pyrolysis) takes place with support from renewably-generated heating sources
  
  
• huge biomass production facilities are set up to feed the enormous demand of the steel industry, as well as requisite supply chains
  
  

Note: This article has been written in accordance with an article exchange agreement between Japan Metal daily and BigMint.