Carbon Recycling Technology (CRT): An Enabling Platform for Green Iron and Industrial Decarbonisation

Carbon Recycling Technology (CRT): An Enabling Platform for Green Iron and Industrial Decarbonisation Clean Energy and Water Technologies Pty Ltd (CEWT) The global energy transition is often framed as a challenge of generating clean electricity. While this is essential, heavy industries such as steel, aluminium, magnesium, and silicon production operate on fundamentally different principles. These industries do not simply consume electricity; they rely on high-temperature chemical energy carriers and reducing gases to transform raw materials into useful products. Steelmaking illustrates this challenge clearly. Modern Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) processes require hot reducing gases to convert iron oxide into metallic iron. Even in hydrogen-based DRI systems, electricity must first produce hydrogen through electrolysis, and then additional energy must heat that hydrogen to approximately 800–900 °C before it can act as a reducing agent in the shaft furnace. For a typical 2 million-tonne-per-year green-iron plant, hydrogen production alone may require 750–800 MW of electrolysis power, with an additional 50–60 MW required simply to heat the hydrogen to the required reaction temperature. In other words, the system must manufacture both the molecule and its thermal state before metallurgical reduction can begin. Conventional MIDREX plants avoid this inefficiency by generating hot reducing gas directly in the reformer, where methane reforming simultaneously produces hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and the required process temperature. This architecture—where chemistry and heat are created in the same step—has made gas-based DRI one of the most efficient ironmaking routes available. Carbon Recycling Technology (CRT) seeks to preserve this industrial architecture while eliminating the need for fresh fossil inputs. By integrating renewable hydrogen with recycled carbon in a closed-loop system, CRT produces hydrogen-rich molecular energy carriers that can deliver heat, reduction chemistry, and power generation within the same platform. Rather than treating electricity generation, hydrogen production, and industrial heat as separate systems, CRT integrates them into a single enabling energy infrastructure. This platform can supply: • firm renewable power • hydrogen-rich reducing gases • high-temperature industrial heat • recyclable carbon-based fuels Once such an energy platform exists, green iron production becomes a natural extension. A DRI shaft furnace can simply be integrated into the system, using the hydrogen-rich reducing gases already available to convert iron ore into metallic iron. This approach highlights an important principle of industrial decarbonisation: while electricity powers machines, molecules transform materials. Heavy industry therefore, requires not only clean electricity but also scalable pathways to produce the high-temperature chemical energy carriers needed for metallurgical and industrial processes. Carbon Recycling Technology provides a pathway toward such an integrated system—supporting green iron production while simultaneously enabling the broader decarbonisation of energy-intensive industries.

CEWT's defossilastion Framework

CRT is more powerful than Net-Zero concept in climate change

Net Zero Balances Carbon. Carbon Circulation Eliminates the Problem. Suggested LinkedIn headline Net Zero balances carbon. Carbon Circulation prevents the problem in the first place. LinkedIn Post Text For more than a decade, climate policy has focused on Net Zero. The idea is straightforward: Emit CO₂ → Remove CO₂ → Balance the equation. This framework has mobilised governments, corporations and investors around the world. But fundamentally, Net Zero is an accounting approach. It assumes emissions will occur and must later be offset, captured, or removed. A different approach is possible. Instead of balancing emissions after they occur, we can design energy systems where carbon never becomes waste in the first place. This is the principle behind Carbon Recycling Technology (CRT). In CRT systems, captured CO₂ is combined with renewable hydrogen to produce renewable methane. When methane is used for power generation or industrial energy, the resulting CO₂ is captured and recycled back into the system. Carbon atoms therefore, circulate continuously within the energy system. Carbon becomes a recyclable carrier of energy, while renewable hydrogen provides the energy input that drives the cycle. This shifts the conversation from: Carbon accounting → Carbon system design Instead of managing emissions after they occur, circular carbon systems prevent them at the source. The next phase of the energy transition may therefore not simply be about achieving Net Zero. It may be about building circular carbon energy systems. Clean Energy and Water Technologies Pty Ltd (CEWT) Advancing circular carbon energy systems for a resilient and sustainable future. #CircularCarbon #CarbonRecycling #EnergyTransition #Decarbonisation #CleanEnergy #NetZero #EnergySystems #IndustrialDecarbonisation

Closing the Carbon loop

Closing the Loops: Energy, Carbon and Water Clean Energy and Water Technologies Pty Ltd (CEWT) For more than two decades, my work has focused on a simple but often overlooked principle: Sustainable industrial systems must allow energy to flow while materials circulate in closed cycles. At the beginning of this millennium, I was among those advocating the introduction of hydrogen into the energy system as a pathway to reduce emissions. Over time, it became clear that hydrogen is best understood as an energy vector rather than the final carrier of energy. The deeper challenge lies in how our industrial systems handle carbon. For more than a century, modern industry has operated with an open carbon loop: extract fossil carbon → use it once for energy → release it into the atmosphere. Nature operates very differently. In natural systems, carbon circulates continuously through closed cycles. Plants, oceans, soils, and the atmosphere exchange carbon constantly, maintaining a dynamic balance. The same systems perspective also applies to water. During my earlier work in desalination and energy systems, I often wrote that water and energy are two sides of the same coin. Water infrastructure requires energy, And energy infrastructure depends heavily on water for cooling, processing, and transport. Over time, a broader systems insight emerged: Energy flows through the system. Carbon and water should circulate within it. When industrial systems break these natural cycles, instability appears — whether in the form of resource conflicts, environmental stress, or energy insecurity. Closing the carbon loop, therefore, becomes one of the most important engineering challenges of our time. If renewable energy produces hydrogen, that hydrogen can combine with captured carbon to create fuels that circulate in a closed cycle. In this way, carbon becomes a recyclable carrier of energy rather than waste. The future energy system may ultimately resemble nature more closely than the fossil system it replaces: a system where energy flows continuously while materials circulate in stable loops. Clean Energy and Water Technologies (CEWT) is founded on this principle — integrating energy, carbon and water into a coherent industrial system designed for long‑term sustainability. Clean Energy and Water Technologies Pty Ltd (CEWT) | ABN 61 691 320 028

CRT Transport Application - a demonstration Project