CSIR-IMMT-led consortium to develop India’s first 100 pc hydrogen DRI pilot plant
A national consortium led by the CSIR-Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology (CSIR-IMMT), Bhubaneswar, will set up India's first pilot plant to produce direct reduced iron (DRI) using 100% hydrogen instead of coal or natural gas.
The Rs 207-crore project has received in-principle approval, with the Ministry of Steel and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) providing government support of about Rs 113 crore under the National Green Hydrogen Mission; the rest comes from industry partners.
The pilot will use a vertical shaft furnace with a 20-tonne-per-day capacity, engineered to work with India's low-grade hematite ores, and is targeted for completion around 2029.
Industry partners in the consortium include Godavari Power and Ispat, Lloyd Steel, Jindal Stainless, Thyssenkrupp Industries India, with Tata Steel and Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) also being brought in.
A parallel Rs 20-crore pilot will test 30% hydrogen injection with biochar in a rotary kiln, offering a transition pathway for existing DRI plants that cannot immediately shift to full hydrogen.
Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) and Steel Decarbonization Pathways
Steel is conventionally made via the blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) route, which uses coking coal as a reducing agent and is highly carbon-intensive (steelmaking contributes roughly 7-9% of global CO2 emissions). The DRI route reduces iron ore to sponge iron using a reducing gas (traditionally coal-derived syngas or natural gas) instead of coke, and the DRI is then melted in an electric arc furnace (EAF) or induction furnace. India is the world's largest producer of DRI, mostly via coal-based rotary kilns, making the sector a key decarbonization target.
Key Details
- BF-BOF route: uses coking coal as reductant; highest emission intensity per tonne of steel.
- DRI-EAF route: iron ore reduced by syngas/hydrogen, then melted using electricity, which can be renewable — enabling much lower emissions if the reducing gas and power are green.
- Replacing carbon-based reductants with hydrogen in DRI produces water vapour instead of CO2 as the by-product, making "hydrogen-DRI" a globally watched near-zero-carbon steelmaking pathway (already piloted in Sweden's HYBRIT project).
- India's National Steel Policy (2017) targets 300 million tonnes crude steel capacity by 2030-31, making decarbonization of this expansion critical to net-zero goals.
The CSIR-IMMT pilot is India's first attempt to run a DRI shaft furnace entirely on hydrogen rather than coal-syngas, directly testing the DRI-EAF pathway with a hydrogen reductant, and is designed for India's abundant but lower-grade hematite ores rather than the high-grade ore used in similar projects abroad.
National Green Hydrogen Mission (2023)
The National Green Hydrogen Mission was approved by the Union Cabinet on 4 January 2023 with an outlay of Rs 19,744 crore, aiming to make India a global hub for the production, usage, and export of green hydrogen and its derivatives. It is implemented under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
The Rs 113-crore government contribution to the CSIR-IMMT pilot plant comes from this Mission's pilot project component, making the steel sector one of the Mission's flagship hard-to-abate use cases for green hydrogen beyond mobility and energy.
CSIR and Its Institutional Structure
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is India's premier autonomous R&D organisation, established in 1942 and functioning under the Ministry of Science and Technology through the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). It runs a network of national laboratories covering diverse fields from aerospace to biotechnology.
Key Details
- CSIR operates about 37 national laboratories/institutes across India, each specializing in a distinct research domain.
- CSIR-IMMT, Bhubaneswar, was originally established in 1964 as the Regional Research Laboratory and renamed the Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology in 2007, specializing in mineral processing and metallurgy.
- CSIR labs typically operate through multi-stakeholder consortia (academia, PSUs, and private industry) for mission-mode technology development, as seen in this DRI project.
CSIR-IMMT's domain expertise in mineral and metallurgical technology makes it the natural technical anchor for a hydrogen-DRI pilot dealing with iron ore reduction chemistry, while the consortium model brings in steel producers as both funders and eventual technology adopters.
- Total project cost: Rs 207 crore; government (National Green Hydrogen Mission) share: approximately Rs 113 crore.
- Pilot plant capacity: 20 tonnes per day of hydrogen-based DRI; targeted completion around 2029.
- National Green Hydrogen Mission: approved 4 January 2023; outlay Rs 19,744 crore; target 5 MTPA green hydrogen production by 2030.
- Related transition-technology pilot: Rs 20 crore rotary kiln project testing 30% hydrogen injection with biochar.
- Nodal ministries: Ministry of Steel and Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).