We’re celebrating getting to the “fringe” of the weekend with a Heat Treat Fringe Friday installment: a project that revolutionizes domestic steel making. Learn more about this green steel tech that plans to turn into a 500,000-tonne per year production micro-mill!
While not exactly heat treat, “Fringe Friday” deals with interesting developments in one of our key markets: aerospace, automotive, medical, energy, or general manufacturing.
Hertha Metals has founded a technology with the potential to transform domestic steelmaking. The company’s proprietary technology is powered by natural gas, hydrogen, and electricity, enabling steel production from any grade of iron ore or waste oxide, in any format, including fines and lumps. Hertha’s process has been demonstrated at a continuous 1 tonne-per-day scale at their Conroe, TX facility, with plans to scale up to 9,000-tonnes, before launching a 500,000-tonne per year micro-mill.
This semi-continuous, single-step process delivers tunable iron and steelmaking. With Flex-HERS™, the proprietary technology, Hertha Metals can tap into domestic iron ore resources and produce low-emission steel using abundant natural gas. As clean hydrogen becomes more available and affordable, they plan to switch fuels — without changing the furnace, to remove the loss of stranded assets, and future-proof a path for steel production.
Source: Hertha Metals
The new technology:
- Enables iron and steel production from low-grade ore, fines and waste oxides
- Single-step production using abundant natural gas or clean hydrogen
- Scalable technology to serve multiple markets
- High-performance steel alloys under development
CEO & Founder
Hertha Metals
Source:Linkedin
“After three short years of heads-down building, Hertha Metals is ready to show the world what we have achieved. After more than 300 years of coal-based primary steelmaking, Hertha Metals is introducing a process that is more energy efficient, more cost competitive, and more flexible with feedstock quality.
“The team at Hertha has been hard at work, developing and scaling our single-step ore-to-steelmaking technology. We have demonstrated our technology with various ore qualities and format (including fines) at a scale of 1 tonne per day of continuous clean steel production. This is the largest novel steelmaking pilot plant demonstration in the US and I am so proud of the speed at which we got here,” said CEO and founder,
Laureen Meroueh.
Heat Treat Today original press release, last updated on 09/05/2025 at 5:15am.
