3 ms·
In the 1950's Norway had a pilot plant that made iron by electrowinning sulfide iron ore. Which was a waste product from copper mining. Used a low temperature w
by Gibbon1 6y ago
In the 1950's Norway had a pilot plant that made iron by electrowinning sulfide iron ore. Which was a waste product from copper mining. Used a low temperature wet cell. And the steel industry was perfectly happy to take their small production runs.
From memory efficiency was 4.5kwh/kg. At 12 cents/kwh that's $0.50/kg.
Seems like a better idea to do that than to pretend hydrogen is 'green'.
- Hypx 6y agoThe amount of hydrogen you need for hydrogen DRI is quite small. From this source: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/08/f54/fcto-h2-scale-kickoff-2018-8-chevrier.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/08/f54/fcto-h2-... You need about 54kg of hydrogen per ton of iron. Assuming it takes 50 kWh of energy to make 1 kg of hydrogen, you get something like 2.7 kWh per kg of iron. This is significantly more energy efficient than the idea you're proposing.
- Gibbon1 6y agoFound this report from a more recent attempt. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6918249/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6918249/ The Norwegian pilot plant used a crude asbestos separator for the anode and cathode. The above used some magic polymer. They got it down to 3.53 kwh/kg