Project Description

The University of Utah (UU) is working to develop a CCS project at the Iron Mountain iron mine, located near Cedar city, Utah. The focused project seeks to enable the mine to realize CCS associated with direct reduced iron (DRI) processing, producing ‘green’ steel. The project team includes site operator Utah Iron LLC as well as the Utah Geological Survey, Kansas Geologic Survey, Oklahoma University, Oklahoma Geologic Survey, Montana State University, NMT, Los Alamos National Laboratory, CarbonSolutions LLC, and CandaceCadyConsultingLLC.

The main goal of the project is to evaluate the feasibility of storing 0.3 to 1 MMTCO2 generated from the direct reduced iron (DRI) process, and the project would be the first of its kind. The DRI process refers to the solid-state processes of reducing iron oxides to metallic iron at temperatures below the melting point of iron. During this process, CO2 and H2O are produced by CH4 catalysis, and heated before entering the reactor (Fig. 3). Iron reduction reactions occur producing CO2 and water. The CO2 can then be stripped, out, compressed, and stored while iron is cooled and sent for further processing into steel.

If successful, the CCS project will be the first commercial-scale CCS operation in Utah and serve for other potential basin and range storage sites. But most of all, it will prove the viability of using CCS to make green steel and new innovations may also result in H2 production.