3 ms·
Steel with no carbon in it is just iron.
by jstanley 6y ago
Steel with no carbon in it is just iron.
- gostsamo 6y agoTo make the steel - sure, to achieve the melting temperature - let's try without coal, okay?
- tinco 6y agoYou need carbon to reduce the iron ore to iron. Coal to heat and melt the iron. And carbon to harden the iron to steel. If I understand it correctly the innovation here is that step 1 is done using hydrogen, presumably the heating is done with (green) electricity, and the last step does not bind the carbon to oxygen, so they are carbon emissions free, not carbon free.
- pjc50 6y agoYes, but the trick is to just put it in the steel and not in the atmosphere as well.
- xorcist 6y agoThis story is not about carbon-free steel but the production of steel without releasing carbon in the atmosphere. The most carbon dioxide intensive step of steel production is in the production of iron sponge, from which both steel and wrought iron is produced. It is where the blast furnace is involved. But hydrogen can be used instead. It is a lot more complicated than one would think because not only is carbon very efficient at picking up oxygen, it is also an exothermic process which makes it very practical. This energy have to be added some other way when using direct reduction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron
- jstanley 6y agoI know that the story is not actually about zero-carbon steel. I was replying to the commenter I replied to, who had clearly misunderstood the commenter that they were in turn replying to.