thyssenkrupp Steel is supplying low-CO₂ “bluemint” steel to its customer Accuride for the production of truck wheels. To improve the carbon footprint of the wheel for the customer Accuride, several parameters in flat steel production have been optimized with regard to sustainability.

Compared with conventional steel, bluemint Steel used for sustainable wheel production offers emission savings of 70% up to the hot strip production stage. This climate-friendly effect is achieved by using Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI; direct reduced iron (DRI) in briquetted form, earlier post)—pre-reduced iron ore—in the blast furnace. This enables less coal to be used for the reduction process, resulting in reduced emissions.

bluemint Steel is a flat steel product which does not have any effect on the balance of Scope 3 (upstream chain) emissions at the Duisburg site. These are all emissions that occur during the production and transport of the input materials. In this way, the CO₂ intensity of each metric ton is reduced by 1.5 metric tons, to 0.6 metric tons. This calculation methodology as well as the produced quantity of bluemint Steel has been confirmed by the international certifier DNV.

A steel with a higher strength is used, which enables a lower sheet thickness with the same performance. This lightweight construction effect makes for a weight saving compared to conventional wheel steel, leading to lower fuel consumption in the utilization phase.

This enables a double CO₂ saving: during the steel production and during the entire utilization phase of the wheel. Taken together, this amounts to more than 10% over the entire lifecycle with a mileage of 1,200,000 km.

The weight-optimized bluemint wheel can also score points in terms of sustainability compared to a much lighter forged aluminium wheel of the same size.

thyssenkrupp already offers its customers CO2-reduced and certified steels on the basis of its tkH2Steel transformation concept. To this end, various opportunities for CO2 reduction are being exploited within the existing technology framework. The decisive step towards climate-neutral steel production will be the construction of hydrogen-based direct reduction plants. The first plant is scheduled to go on stream in Duisburg in 2026. Production of five million metric tons of low-CO₂ steel is already planned for 2030.