Electra begins pilot production of clean iron

BOULDER — Electrasteel Inc., a developer of a more-sustainable iron and steel production process that does business as Electra, recently began a pilot manufacturing run at its Boulder facility. 

The pilot project will demonstrate Electra’s ability to “produce metallic iron from already mined, high-impurity, commercially stranded ores to accelerate decarbonization, sustainability, and circularity across the ore-to-steel value chain,” the company said in a news release. 

Electra said it hopes to “produce clean iron in approximately 1-meter square plates” with ore provided by Australian mining and metals company BHP Group Ltd., an Electra investor.

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Founded by CEO Sandeep Nijhawan and chief technology officer Quoc Pham, Electra last year closed a $85 million in investment round led by Bill Gates-backed Breakthrough Ventures and expanded its operations at 6400 Lookout Road in Boulder’s Gunbarrel neighborhood, encompassing more than 60,000 square feet and occupying the entire building.

“Electra’s pilot plant is a significant step toward a cleaner, more sustainable, and circular steel industry,” said Noah Hanners, an executive vice president at Nucor Corp., a steel company and Electa investor. “Electra’s pure iron metal is uniquely positioned to allow the upcycling of a broader range of steel scrap into higher-value sustainable steel products, improving the circularity and sustainability of the steel industry.”

The company uses an electrochemical process to refine low-grade iron ore — treated as waste in traditional refinement processes — into high-purity iron, lowering the process temperature from 1,600 to 60 degrees Celsius. Coal energy is replaced with intermittent renewable energy, and the resulting pure iron can be converted to steel.

“Clean iron produced from a wide variety of ore types is the key constraint to decarbonizing the steel industry sustainably,” Nijhawan said in the release. “With support from our partners across the value chain, the pilot brings us closer to our goal of producing millions of tonnes of clean iron by the end of the decade.”

Nijhawan told BizWest last year that Electra employs about 80 people at the Boulder operation, but could double in employment in the not-too-distant future if it can find enough talented engineers, chemists and other skilled workers. Electra also maintains a small operation in Boston.