Hyundai Steel builds Dangjin pilot plant to fast‑track DRI US mill

2026-01-07

Dec. 6, 2026 - Hyundai Steel will construct a pilot facility for Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) at its Dangjin Steelworks in South Chungcheong Province, South Korea. DRI is solid iron produced without melting iron ore. The company plans to use this pilot facility to verify various DRI production processes and provide technical support for the construction of a steel mill in the United States.

According to steel industry sources on the 5th, construction of the pilot facility has already started, with a designed capacity of 30 kilograms of molten iron per hour. It is expected to be put into operation next year for trial steel production, and preparations for the commissioning of the steel mill in Louisiana, USA, will be advanced simultaneously.

The DRI process uses natural gas or hydrogen as a reducing agent to remove oxygen from solid iron ore and produce iron. It not only achieves iron purity comparable to blast furnace processes but also significantly reduces carbon emissions, with lower investment costs than blast furnace production. The core reason Hyundai Steel chose Dangjin for the pilot facility is that a hydrogen plant has been in operation there since 2016, producing hydrogen with a purity of 99.999% (higher than the conventional 99.99%), which can be used to verify hydrogen-based direct reduction ironmaking technology.

The Louisiana steel mill will break ground this year, adopting the DRI process. As the world's first integrated electric furnace steel mill, it has a total investment of 5.8 billion US dollars (approximately 8.548 trillion won) and an annual capacity of 2.7 million tons of steel products, supplying local automakers such as Hyundai, Kia, Ford, and General Motors.

A 100-meter-high large-scale facility will be built at the mill to react iron ore pellets (made by compressing and roasting iron ore powder) with reducing agents to produce DRI. Compared with the blast furnace process that produces reduced iron using carbon monoxide generated by heating coke, carbon emissions can be reduced by up to 70%.

The scale of the Dangjin pilot facility is only 1/100 of that of the equipment at the US steel mill. It will be used to accumulate core data such as the cost of reducing agent input and exhaust gas capture methods, helping the Louisiana steel mill achieve stable operation as soon as possible and mass-produce high-quality automotive steel sheets.

To advance the project, Hyundai Steel doubled the size of its North American Business Division (which oversees the construction of the Louisiana steel mill) last year and expanded the staff of its Low-Carbon Technology Office to accelerate the research and development of hydrogen reduction technology.

A Hyundai Steel official stated: "The construction of the pilot facility in Dangjin aims to lock in the initial technology and establish manufacturing standards for DRI production at the Louisiana steel mill, identify potential issues in the operation of large-scale equipment in advance, formulate response plans, and promote the early stable operation of the steel mill."