Tag Archives: Mark Hutchinson

Fortescue kicks off battery-electric truck testing in the Pilbara

Environmental, Mine operation news, Mining equipment, Power supply for mines, Steel and iron ore, Sustainable mining, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fortescue Metals Group has started testing a battery-electric truck at its operations in the Pilbara of Western Australia as part of its latest decarbonisation efforts.

Having floated the idea of a battery-electric haul truck some three years ago – and started a physical build process 12 months ago – the company is now testing a battery-electric converted MT4400 AC truck at its Christmas Creek iron ore operations, Fortescue confirmed last week.

WAE and Fortescue Future Industries, part of Fortescue’s newly branded Fortescue Energy division, have been spearheading developments on this truck, referred to as the “Roadrunner” (pictured). The 221-t payload vehicle is fitted with a 1.4 MWh battery from WAE. It has already been run through more than 20 hours of dynamic testing that has included, among other things, downhill recharging scenarios, Fortescue said last week.

The vehicle is thought to be the largest battery-electric haul truck running in Pilbara operating conditions.

The converted MT4400 AC is expected to be joined by a 3 MW charger prototype – developed by WAE and a third party – by the end of the year. “This will help us to understand and develop haul truck duty and charging cycles,” Mark Hutchinson, CEO of Fortescue Future Industries, said in a conference call last week.

In June, Fortescue, through WAE, announced the expansion of its battery and electric powertrain production operations in the UK with an additional state-of-the-art facility in Oxfordshire. The facility, which will open in 2024, will focus on the production of a wide range of zero emission products for the off-road sector, including trucks and trains.

Alongside these battery-electric developments, Fortescue said it will have its first “green hydrogen fuel cell haul truck” on site for similar testing next year. This truck is being delivered through the company’s partnership with Liebherr and will be based off a 240-t-payload T 264 haul truck.

In June 2022, Fortescue announced a partnership with Liebherr for the development and supply of green mining haul trucks for integration with the “zero emissions power system” technologies being developed by FFI and WAE. Under the partnership, Fortescue agreed to purchase a fleet of 120 haul trucks from Liebherr; a commitment that represents approximately 45% of the current haul truck fleet at Fortescue’s operations.

In answer to an analyst question last week, Christiaan Heyning, FFI’s Head of Decarbonisation, said: “We are…putting both battery-electric trucks as well as a fuel cell electric trucks on-site this calendar year to do extended testing to figure out the ramp-up efficiency of both battery-electric and fuel cell. We will use those insights to make the final decisions about what our fleet will be.

“As you appreciate, it’s really dependent on whole routes and, therefore, we need to do more testing before we can make up our mind.”

A 100-day “sprint” FFI project focused on converting a legacy 221-t class Terex Unit Rig MT4400 AC electric drive, diesel-powered haul truck to run on a ‘green’ hydrogen 180 kW fuel cell system and a 300 kW/h battery was previously completed and run at Fortescue’s Hazelmere facility in Western Australia.

Primetals, Mitsubishi, Fortescue and voestalpine team up to tackle net-zero emission ironmaking

Environmental, Mining services, Power supply for mines, Steel and iron ore, Sustainable mining, , , , , , , , , , ,

Primetals Technologies, Mitsubishi Corporation, Fortescue and voestalpine have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at designing and engineering an industrial-scale prototype plant with a new process for net-zero-emission ironmaking at the voestalpine site in Linz, Austria.

The collaboration will also investigate the implementation and operation of the plant, the companies say.

The new ironmaking process will be based on Primetals Technologies’ HYFOR and Smelter solutions. HYFOR is, according to Primetals, the world’s first direct reduction process for iron ore fines that will not require any agglomeration steps, like sintering or pelletising. A pilot plant has been in operation since the end of 2021, and Primetals has run numerous successful test campaigns over the last year including successful trials on Fortescue’s Pilbara iron ore products.

The new Smelter technology from Primetals Technologies is a furnace powered by electrical energy. It is used for melting and final reduction of direct reduced iron (DRI) based on lower-grade iron ore. In that way, it produces alternative green hot metal for the steelmaking plant.

The project planning phase will be used to design an industrial-scale prototype plant with a capacity of between 3-5 t/h of ‘green’ hot metal. It is the first solution to link a hydrogen-based direct reduction plant for iron ore fines with a smelter, Primetals says.

The main goal of the project planning phase is to develop the basis for decision to realise a prototype plant capable of continuous operation, and then to gain the know-how needed for the next step: a commercial full-scale plant. Another target is to investigate the use of various types of iron ores to produce DRI, hot briquetted iron and hot metal and, as a next step, draw conclusions about the individual process steps as well as different combinations of them.

The hydrogen used in the new plant will mainly come from Verbund, voestalpine’s and Austria’s leading renewable energy producer, who operates a proton exchange membrane electrolyser named H2Future. Located in Linz, this plant has a capacity of over 6 MW, and is still the world’s largest of its kind used at a steel plant. The H2Future plant will be upgraded to allow for the compression and storage of hydrogen gas before use in the combined HYFOR and Smelter plant.

Hubert Zajicek, Member of the Management Board of voestalpine AG and Head of the Steel Division, said: “voestalpine has a clear plan to decarbonise steel production with the greentec steel program. An important first step is the incremental shift from the blast furnace route to a hybrid-electric steel pathway from 2027.

“Over the long term, our mission is carbon-neutral steel production using green hydrogen, for which we are already undertaking intensive research into promising breakthrough technologies. With the joint project with Primetals Technologies and Fortescue, we are taking another new path towards achieving the goal of CO2-neutral steel production by 2050.”

Fortescue’s main responsibility in the new project is to provide knowledge about iron ore quality and preparation. In addition, Fortescue will supply various iron ores for the new plant.

Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) CEO, Mark Hutchinson, said the partnership was the perfect alignment of the company’s mining and renewable energy goals.