Why Korea Zinc, a Leading Non-Ferrous Metal Smelting Company, Participated in the World's Largest Hydrogen Industry Exhibition

Achievements in 고민 for Eco-friendly Energy Transition

Korea Zinc, a world-class non-ferrous metal smelting company, announced on the 14th that it participated in the hydrogen industry specialized exhibition 2023 H2 MEET held on the 13th at KINTEX in Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do, sharing its green hydrogen value chain.

At this exhibition, Korea Zinc showcased the current status and plans for building a value chain that connects green hydrogen and green ammonia production through renewable energy to storage, transportation, and export.

Korea Zinc plans to achieve RE100 and carbon neutrality by 2050 through green hydrogen produced in-house.

Kang Kyung-sung, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry, Lee Yong-woo, Lee Won-wook, Democratic Party of Korea lawmakers, and other key figures are listening to an explanation of Korea Zinc's green hydrogen business roadmap at the Korea Zinc booth at 'hH2 MEET 2023' in Goyang-si, Gyeonggi Province.
[Photo by Korea Zinc]

Korea Zinc’s core smelting business has a very high proportion of electricity costs due to the nature of processes such as electrolysis. Korea Zinc has been considering ways to reduce electricity bills and transition to eco-friendly energy to improve sustainability.

As a solution, Korea Zinc pointed to renewable energy projects. As the first step, in 2018, it directly built and operates a 125 MW solar power plant, then the largest in Australia, at its Australian subsidiary SMC Smelter. Through this, the SMC Smelter receives 25% of its annual electricity demand from the same solar power plant.

Korea Zinc’s short-term hydrogen business goal is to conduct small-scale demonstration projects both domestically and overseas that include both green hydrogen production and utilization. Arc Energy is conducting the Sun HQ green hydrogen demonstration project, which replaces diesel trucks operated by another logistics subsidiary in Australia, Townsville Logistics, with hydrogen trucks, and installs a 1 MW PEM electrolyzer and hydrogen refueling station to produce green hydrogen.

Domestically, Korea Zinc is participating in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy’s national project for the commercialization demonstration of hydrogen forklifts. Based on the experience and data accumulated through the demonstration projects, the company plans to stably promote large-scale hydrogen projects in the future.

In the long term, Korea Zinc envisions importing green hydrogen and green ammonia produced in Australia to Korea to resolve domestic energy security issues and contribute to the activation of the hydrogen economy.

Korea Zinc, together with Hanwha Impact and SK Gas, has formed the Korea-Australia Hydrogen (Han-Ho H2) Consortium and is reviewing the establishment of a supply chain to export more than 1 million tons of green ammonia annually from Australia to Korea by 2030. To this end, it plans to build the Collinsville Green Energy Hub in Queensland’s renewable energy zone in Australia with a maximum generation capacity of 4,000 MW, and is leading the development of domestic green infrastructure by investing in various hydrogen-related technologies such as ammonia transport terminals, ammonia cracking facilities, hydrogen fuel cells, and hydrogen co-firing and full-firing turbine power plants.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.