Nippon Steel, POSCO to Launch DRI JV with Steel Making Dust

Nippon Steel and POSCO announced on Monday they launch direct reduced iron making joint venture in January 2008 to recycle steel making dust from operations of POSCO. POSCO controls 70% of the JV with 30% share by Nippon Steel. The JV, POSCO-Nippon Steel RHF Joint Venture (PNR) builds 2 rotary hearth furnaces with annual 200,000 tonnes of dry dust processing capacity at Pohang and Gwangyang works for around 16 billion yen and supplies iron source to POSCO and Nippon Steel. The furnace, which Nippon Steel developed and operates, is to process dust with around 70% iron oxide and zinc oxide to make DRI and to recycle zinc. The DRI is put into blast furnace as iron source. PNR produces around 300,000 tonnes per year of DRI, of which POSCO gets 210,000 tonnes and Nippon Steel gets 90,000 tonnes. Integrated steel maker with annual 30 million tonnes of raw steel output makes around 2-3 million tonnes of dust. POSCO can utilize the dust, which the firm now recycles as cement material, as steel making material. With DRI use at blast furnace, the steel makers can reduce carbon dioxide emission. Nippon Steel and POSCO try to register the project to clean development mechanism executive board of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as CDM project.