When modeling Hydrogen Direct Reduction (#HDR) at the pellet scale - a key step in decarbonizing steel industry - a fundamental question remains: How well do our models actually reflect reality?
Our team of thermodynamic enthusiasts working on this question includes Moritz to Baben, Fabrice Yang, Anna Ravensburg, and Ömer Kerim Büyükuslu, who is pursuing his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials with Prof. Dierk Raabe. Anna recently presented our latest results at the #H2MSE2025 in Siegburg/Bonn, perfectly organized by the German Society for Materials Science (DGM).
🔎 A review by Salucci et al. published last December highlighted the massive scatter in reported activation energies for iron oxide reduction reactions, with values ranging from 66 kJ/mol ± 57.2 kJ/mol for the magnetite to wüstite transition. 😯
Yes, you read the uncertainty correctly, the activation energy could be in the range of 10 kJ/mol or over 100 kJ/mol. These discrepancies indicate huge gaps in the fundamental understanding of the reaction mechanisms, leading to questionable model parameterization. Keep in mind that we want these models to extrapolate well to predict reactions when moving from C/CH4 as reductant to #H2 as reductant!
So how do we at GTT-Technologies meet the challenge of robust model parameterization? By being honest about our input parameters! ➡️ Figure 1 in the carousel
Instead of relying on excessive fitting, we have drastically reduced the number of adjustable parameters (➡️ Figure 2) and ensured that our model remains thermodynamically consistent.
And yet, even with this approach, different parameter sets can fit the same conversion curves. But which one is correct? This was a key point in our talk at #H2MSE2025, where we discussed how to validate our model. If you missed it, stay tuned for our upcoming publication (just follow us here, we will keep you updated). And if you cannot wait, feel free to contact us!
📌 Related work: https://lnkd.in/eK-ygfEF
✅ Anna’s work is part of the ProDekan project #ProcessSimulation for #Decarbonization, supported by EFRE/JTF in NRW #EUinmyRegion #efrenrw
📸 The photo on the first slide of the carousel was taken by the conference organization team from the German Society for Materials Science (DGM).