A groundbreaking ceremony was held on 6 November for the HyIron Oshivela green iron project in Namibia.
The €30 million (US$32 million) plant is being built near the Valencia mine, close to Arandis, in the Erongo region by HyIron, a Namibian-German joint venture.
It will use green hydrogen instead of coal for the reduction of iron ore.
The investment is being facilitated by the Namibia Investment Promotion and Development Board (NIPDB) and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.
Production is set to commence by the end of 2024.
The plant will have a capacity of 15,000 tonnes a year (t/y) of direct reduced iron in its first phase, helping to avoid 27,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, which is equivalent to 50% of the carbon emissions of Namibia’s power industry.
A feasibility study is being conducted to evaluate a mid-term capacity expansion to 1 million t/y, which would reduce annual CO2 emissions by 1.8 million.
The Oshivela plant will be driven by solar and wind energy. In the first phase, a 20MW solar photovoltaic installation will supply carbon-free electricity to the plant. For the first scaled-up production phase, an additional 18MW of wind energy and 140MW of solar are planned.
The power plant will mainly supply energy for the water electrolysis process to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen will then be transported into the furnace, where it reacts with the oxygen of the iron ore at ambient pressure to become water again. This water is then reused in the process.
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Rainer Baake, special envoy for German-Namibian energy and climate cooperation, said the Oshivela plant places Namibia at the forefront of the green industrial transition.
“The sponge iron produced here can also be used as a preliminary product in steel production in Germany to manufacture green steel for the production of wind turbines or vehicles,” Baake said.
According to HyIron, global demand for iron is projected to increase from 1.9 billion t/y currently to 2.2 billion by 2030. To satisfy this rising demand, an additional production capacity of 50 million tonnes has to be added each year.
In December 2022, Germany’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection agreed to fund the HyIron project with more than €13 million over the next two years.