Recent green iron and steel projects in Australia： a review

Under the global carbon neutrality background, the steel industry, as one of the most concentrated industrial sectors in greenhouse gas emissions, is accelerating its transformation toward low carbon and green development. Australia is considered an important future development region for the global green iron and steel due to its unique advantages in resources and energy. This paper takes the major research and development projects and industrial practices in Australia's green steel field in recent years as the research object, systematically reviews the latest progress in iron ore upgrading and pretreatment, green steel technology development, and industrial layout, and focuses on the analysis of representative projects supported by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. Research shows that in response to the difficulty of directly applying medium and low grade iron ores from the Pilbara region to traditional hydrogen based direct reduction processes, Australia is forming a pattern of coordinated development across multiple technology routes, including low temperature agglomeration, ore upgrading, hydrogen based direct reduction combined with electric arc furnaces, hydrogen based direct reduction combined with electric smelting furnaces, flash green ironmaking, direct electrochemical reduction, and traditional blast furnace carbon reduction retrofitting. In terms of industrialisation, Australia is gradually forming a development model with Western Australia as the core and intermediate product export as the orientation, and multiple green steel projects have entered the demonstration, planning, or construction stages. Overall, Australia has preliminarily built an industrial system covering resource development, ore upgrading, product export, and policy support, but still faces challenges such as green hydrogen cost, renewable electricity and transmission infrastructure, water resource security, green product certification, and international market competition. With the decline in green hydrogen cost, the maturation of key technologies, and the advancement of industrial coordination, Australia is expected to gradually transform from a traditional iron ore exporter to a global green iron and steel supply center, providing an important reference for deep decarbonisation of the steel industry.