Sustainable Hydrogen and Aluminothermic Reduction Process for Manganese, its alloys and Critical Raw Materials Production

Project Information

HAlMan

Grant agreement ID: 101091936

DOI

10.3030/101091936

EC signature date 18 November 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 December 2026

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 8 046 086,88

EU contribution

€ 7 316 151,63

Coordinated by

NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HAlMan (Sustainable Hydrogen and Aluminothermic Reduction Process for Manganese, its alloys and Critical Raw Materials Production)

Reporting period: 2024-07-01 to 2025-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The primary objective of HAlMan is to demonstrate at TRL 6-7 an integrated sustainable European process to produce Mn metal and Mn master alloys from a variety of primary and secondary raw materials. HAlMan is based on two key processes currently at TRL 3-4. Furthermore, HAlMan demonstrates sustainable economic routes for using these metals and the process by-products to produce commercial alloys, and a variety of feedstock materials for metallurgical, construction, and energy industries.

HAlMan brings together industry stakeholders from the mining industry, ferroalloy industry, alumina and Al industry, foundry industry, steel industry, technology industry, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and research organisations to collaborate to pilot the process and develop business cases. Project achievements will be shared with other industries and organisations such as construction, automotive, aerospace.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Several types of Mn-ores (e.g. Nchwaning ore, Comilog ore, UMK ore, Gloria ore, and ores from Zambia, Ukraine and Romania) as well as Mn-tailings from Greece have been shown in lab scale to be possible to pre-reduce using hydrogen as reductant and most of them have been shown to be possible to fully reduce with aluminium in the smelting step (aluminothermic reduction experiments have been done with all the different pre-reduced ores). Both Nchwaning and UMK ores have been demonstrated in pilot scale to be possible to reduce with hydrogen. Two different pilot scale technologies “H2-plasma rotary furnace”, and “shaft furnace” have been used to produce over 3 tons Nchwaning and UMK pre-reduced ores. In June 2025, the second and final smelting campaign of the pre-reduced ore with aluminium as reductant was completed using 1.5 tons of pre-reduced ore in electric arc furnace (EAF). Products (alloy and slag) from this campaign has been sent to other partners for validation by end users. The alumina in the slag will be recovered via hydrometallurgical treatment and validated as raw material for aluminium production and the grey mud will be evaluated for cement application during the last phase of the project. A new process to extract Strontium (Sr) from the produced grey mud has been developed in lab scale. In addition, dust from Mn-production and pre-reduced ore are under evaluation as potential raw materials (MnO2) in battery cathodes. Initial results shows that it is possible to use the produced MnO2 in HAlMan in such applications. All experimental data is being gathered, analysed and used by the modelling and LCA partners to establish robust and reliable models of the different processing steps and on the hydrogen consumption and use. A deep dive of the most promising raw materials for the HAlMan process was also conducted. The consortium has had an internal exploitation workshop (April 2025) aiming at getting an overview of the most promising business cases for each partner and also to update each partners IP. That workshop was followed up by a second workshop (Nov 2025) where the main identified challenges, supply of reductants (hydrogen and aluminium) was discussed as well as the final business cases and exploitation strategies from HAlMan. A potential Mn-tailing in Greece was also presented at the workshop by an invited speaker. Finally, the consortium has published and presented results in several well-known journals and conferences.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The resource mapping activities in WP2 has shown that Mn-ores contains many different CRM that is under utilized today. Focus is hence to demonstrate a process where more elements from the Mn-ore body is extracted and utilized than today (A more resource efficient process that SoA FeMn production). Also it has been demonstrated that the produced alloy contain minor elements of carbon which is advantageous for the steel producers. The main reason for this is because aluminum is used as reductant instead of carbon.