Green hydrogen and iron-ore giant Fortescue has claimed “industrial-scale misuse” of its intellectual property by start-up Element Zero for new green iron technology that could compete replace the need for hydrogen-based steelmaking, in a lawsuit filed with the federal court of Australia.
The technology is described in court documents as “a confidential process of electrochemical reduction of iron oxide in iron one using ionic liquid electrolytes, to create metallic iron”, or molten oxide electrolysis.
Element Zero claims its electroreduction process converts 98% of iron ore to high-purity iron, while using 30-40% less energy than coal-fired blast furnaces and being able to manage intermittent renewable electricity supply.
Similar technology developed by Boston Metal in the US has been described as a potential killer for green hydrogen-based direct iron reduction (see factbox), currently seen as the main zero-carbon alternative to using blast furnaces for iron and steel production.
Fortescue took a final investment decision last November on a 1,500-tonnes-a-year direct iron reduction plant at its Christmas Creek mine in Western Australia, which would use a co-located, already-operational electrolyser to produce H2 for the facility.
The company has also previously told Hydrogen Insight that it sees China as a key market for green iron exports from Australia — at the time, suggested to be made using renewable hydrogen.
However, green H2 is expensive to produce, with energy losses throughout electrolysis, storage and transportation, making direct electrification a cheaper option, particularly if the technology can manage intermittent renewable electricity input.
Fortescue alleges that Bart Kolodziejczyk, co-founder of Element Zero and chief scientist for the mining company between July 2020 and March 2022, and another former scientist, Bjorn Winther-Jensen, had copied and absconded with information about the confidential green iron process for which they had led research and development, upon their resignations in 2021.
Fortescue further claims that this intellectual property was then used by Element Zero in the development of a pilot iron electrolysis project, and had requested a search order for the start-up’s offices from the federal court.
The Australian mining giant has also named Michael Masterman — a former chief financial officer for Fortescue before he co-founded Element Zero — as a respondent in the lawsuit.
“Element Zero believes the Fortescue legal action is entirely without merit and welcomes the opportunity to respond to Fortescue’s spurious claims,” the start-up said in a press statement. “Our response will include an application to vary or set aside the original search orders.”
“As Element Zero will demonstrate, its green metals technology was developed independently of and is very different from anything that Fortescue is doing or has done in this space. We continue to rapidly advance our technology.”
