Electra commissions clean iron pilot plant

Electra, a startup backed by BHP, Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, among others, announced the commissioning of a pilot plant to produce metallic iron from already mined, high-impurity, commercially-stranded ores supplied by BHP.

According to the company, the technology used at the plant is aimed at accelerating the decarbonization, sustainability, and circularity of the ore-to-steel value chain.

Located in Boulder, Colorado, the plant processes a wide range of ores and the principal iron ore impurities like alumina and silica are selectively refined as co-products.

The facility is designed to produce clean iron in approximately 1-metre square plates, but capacity is being increased in a phased approach to validate modularity and high-volume commercial-scale production.

“With greater than 99% purity, Electra’s clean iron, combined with recycled scrap steel, offers the highest value-in-use for electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmakers, while reducing the capital intensity, cost, and waste across the value chain,” Electra’s CEO and co-founder, Sandeep Nijhawan, said in a media statement.

“Clean iron produced from a wide variety of ore types is the key constraint to decarbonizing the steel industry sustainably,” he said. “With support from our partners across the value chain, the pilot brings us closer to our goal of producing millions of tonnes of clean iron by the end of the decade.”