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> Making steel and other materials—such as cement, plastic, glass, aluminum, and paper—is the third biggest contributor of greenhouse gases, behind agriculture
by SECProto 7y ago
> Making steel and other materials—such as cement, plastic, glass, aluminum, and paper—is the third biggest contributor of greenhouse gases, behind agriculture and making electricity
While I agree in broad terms that eliminating greenhouse gases in the materials sector is important medium-term, I agree with other posters here that we need to focus hard on implementing solutions we DO have now - specifically, in the electricity and transportation sectors.
> these materials are everywhere in our lives, and we don’t yet have any proven breakthroughs that will give us affordable zero-carbon versions of them
This is at least partially misleading - for aluminum. There are a number of hydroelectric-powered aluminum smelters in Quebec and British Columbia, that produce very-low-carbon aluminum. And there are technologies approaching market for zero-carbon aluminum[1].
[1] https://www.elysis.com/en https://www.elysis.com/en
- garmaine 7y agoIt’s not the source of power. It’s the chemical process itself. You get oxygen out of a metal oxide by binding it with carbon and releasing the CO2. Canadian smelting is just as dirty in this respect. The only other alternative is electrolyzing water to get hydrogen, which binds with the metal oxide’s oxygen to make water again. But not only is this really inefficient by comparison, but now you’re adding O2 to the atmosphere at industrial scale.
- _Microft 7y agoIs using hydrogen for that an actual process or just an idea? There's the problem that hydrogen can make metals brittle, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoTo answer the spirit of your question: yes, replacing carbon containing reducing agents in metal foundries etc is very much something that is being developed.
- philipkglass 7y agoIt's an actual process. The ability of hydrogen to reduce hot iron oxides to metallic iron has been known at least since the early 19th century. But it has not been done on an industrial scale before because using fossil fuels is cheaper, and reducing GHG emissions has not been a significant priority until recently. EDIT: Joseph Priestley actually discovered that iron oxide ("calx of iron") could be reduced to the metallic state by hot hydrogen ("inflammable air") in the late 18th century. https://archive.org/details/b22281824/page/n57 https://archive.org/details/b22281824/page/n57
- _Microft 7y agoThanks!
- garmaine 7y agoIt’s how pure silicon is made today for the transistors in the device you are reading this on.
- SECProto 7y agoI understand that the process itself uses carbon. The site I linked is a carbon-free production process (which would result in zero carbon in combination with hydro power)
- ThrustVectoring 7y agoO2 is roughly two orders of magnitude more abundant than atmospheric CO2. Industrial scale O2 release in this manner is still relatively negligible.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zzzcpan 7y ago> we need to focus hard on implementing solutions we DO have now - specifically, in the electricity and transportation sectors. You should understand that there are no good enough solutions for electricity yet, so not much is going to change on electricity wrt greenhouse gases on the global scale, and the solution to transportation is to essentially stop making cars for personal use, but we only see the opposite happening.