7 ms·

Making Steel with Electricity

140 points by hannob 4y ago

bell-cot 4y ago
> ... In other words: Pure electricity is used to split iron oxide into its elements. ... > ...the iron oxide is dissolved in a solution between a nickel anode and a carbon cathode. ... > ...operates on relatively low temperatures of around 110 °C. ... IANACE (Not A Chemical Engineer), but dissolving iron oxide at 110 °C sounds to me like they'll be using some fairly nasty chemicals, at scale. Which chemicals will have their own environmental & safety issues, etc.
- burnished 4y ago
  Sodium hydroxide in water.
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    So pretty harmless (in context) itself. Might you have any sense for the waste product stream (from the NaOH and impurities in the real-world iron ore), and its major issues?
    - pjc50 4y ago
      NaOH is the classic drain cleaner. You wouldn't want to just dump it in the river, but it's dilutable/neutralizable to harmlessness. Handily, it also reacts (slowly) with CO2 directly out of the air to harmless sodium carbonate. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405656116300578 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240565611... The rest of the waste stream is just slag. That's just dumped in big piles in the open air https://www.usgs.gov/news/science-snippet/slag-what-it-good https://www.usgs.gov/news/science-snippet/slag-what-it-good , although occasionally someone proposes going through it again for different minerals such as rare earths.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
That's really a good field for research right now, because like Jancovici notes in his conf (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQBPhKSWu0&list=PLMDQXkItOZ4II_sYvh0BevIBwmm7fvuHL&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQBPhKSWu0&list=PLMDQXkItOZ...) that we currently price renewable energy in a world where oil is abundant. But once you have to create your wind turbine, solar panels and battery with electricity from wind turbines and solar panels, the price gets very different.
- u320 4y ago
  Yes it gets more expensive.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  How does that add up if he's a proponent of replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power? Won't that get more expensive too? He's a weird one, as he's generally on board with consensus climate change, but he's always had a bee in his bonnet about renewables, making lots of claims that haven't came true. Could we live as today with just renewable energy? (2005) https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/could-we-live-as-today-with-just-renewable-energy/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/could-...
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    > How does that add up if he's a proponent of replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power? > Won't that get more expensive too? Yes, that's the whole point of the conference. Fossil fuels are magical. And at some point, we won't have them anymore. > He's a weird one, as he's generally on board with consensus climate change, but he's always had a bee in his bonnet about renewables, making lots of claims that haven't came true. Jancovici doens't make timed predictions, so I can't see how this can be true. A makes statements about how things are, starting from first principles. The only thing he did insist on some time period was the fact we will cross the +2C°, at some point in the next decades. We are well on track for that.
londons_explore 4y ago
This demonstrates that the tech is near to being usable at scale. The thing that doesn't add up is the price... While coal is still usable as an energy source for making steel, it doesn't make sense to use electricity. And if one country outlaws using coal for steelmaking, then steelmakers will just move to another country - steelmaking is ferociously competitive, and lots of countries subsidise steelmaking because it is strategically important. This tech will remain on the sidelines for 'green' projects only until there is some kind of worldwide carbon tax/cap/quota system.
- awestroke 4y ago
  There is massive investment happening in green steel production. There is a high demand for green steel from car manufacturers among others. It's easy to dismiss anything out of ignorance, but it only amounts to misinformation
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    Car manufacturers at the moment are happy with "100% recycled with carbon free processes" for their steel. That means you take scrap steel, put it in an electric arc furnace, and power that furnace with matching wind/solar contracts. So far, carmaking uses less steel than comes into recycling plants, so it hasn't really caused any change in the market.
    - Danieru 4y ago
      Are you basing this on real knowledge or a guess？ My understanding, from when I lightly researched Japan Steel as a stock, was that car makers want fresh steel with higher guaranteed performance. Thus they can use less steel and reduce weight. Since vehicles are mobile the reduced weight will have a much bigger carbon reduction than from using recycled steel.
      - steve76 4y ago
        [dead]
riedel 4y ago
The headline is a bit misleading since 42% of steel production [1] in Europe is already done using an electric arc furnace (i.e. electricity) . However, this is mostly recycling [2] [1] http://www.eurofer.org/201605-ESF.pdf?wtd=YC9cwLHyOWxX6JJD&request=resource&resource=o6yivpp&rand=6 http://www.eurofer.org/201605-ESF.pdf?wtd=YC9cwLHyOWxX6JJD&r... [2] https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace?lang=en https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace?la...
- ginko 4y ago
  Those still add coke or coal as a reducing agent though so it's not carbon neutral.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  In my view, the steel industry deliberately confuses arc furnaces (mostly used for recycling steel - effectively just melting it down) with making new steel in blast furnaces. This lets them do things like claim "steel made in USA" when in fact the steel was made in China, then brought to the USA, melted in an arc furnace, and suddenly it's "made in USA"! I suspect there are people chucking brand new steel into an arc furnace simply to change its origin country, and to take government subsidies for setting up new 'steel factories'. It also conveniently works around steel import tariffs - because you actually import 'scrap' steel, tariff free.
  - simplotek 4y ago
    > (...) brought to the USA, melted in an arc furnace, and suddenly it's "made in USA"! I don't think this assertion makes sense. Making steel is way more than getting iron and mixing it up with some carbon. You need special manufacturing processes to get specific alloys and treatments to get the properties and reliability you expect. Recycling and importing steel is like importing a raw material. Your comment reads like "This let's them do things like claim burger made in USA when in fact the burger buns were made with corn from Ukraine and meat from Argentina".
    - 4y ago
pjc50 4y ago
A bit of digging found what I think is the right technical data for the "siderwin" process based on "ulcowin": https://energy.nl/media/data/Ulcowin-Technology-Factsheet_080920.pdf https://energy.nl/media/data/Ulcowin-Technology-Factsheet_08... A couple of other side features to raise the feasibility: using waste as input "the most promising material tested was mill scale, a waste product from steel processing" and "Part of the Siderwin concept is the idea that the technology can be used as a flexibility option in the electricity market." (i.e. get demand-flexibility payments from being able to turn off a large electricity sink easily)
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Mill scale is easily recycled in blast furnaces or direct reduction furnaces today... It isn't a way to turn a useless waste product into something valuable that it sounds like.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    The point is to reduce carbon emissions. If there's something that is currently being done with carbon outputs, than can be done without, then that's a good thing.
jimmcslim 4y ago
Meanwhile here in Australia many of us are under the impression that while we may run out of buyers for our thermal coal we will still have a market for our metallurgical coal… “the lucky country” indeed
- anonylizard 4y ago
  You know Australia has the highest % of power generated by solar of any country? You know Australia is the biggest lithium exporter? You know Australia has copper, rare earths, all required for renewable energy? You know Australia also exports the most IRON, a necessary ingredient for steel, right? Where does this delusion that Australia isn't lucky come from?
  - alwayslikethis 4y ago
    The same also goes for Russia. Despite exporting tons of fossil fuels their own electric grid is relatively green mostly due to nuclear power. They also are a major exporter of nuclear tech, which was not sanctioned at all.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Well, one unlucky aspect is the lack of any succesful politician that can absorb that widely available info and combine it to make Australia into an exporter of high value, green products from higher up the supply chain. Bit of a "resource curse" thing at the moment, where you can dig up the wealth and ship it out the country without necessarily enriching the wider population as much as you'd think.
- femto 4y ago
  Others aren't under that impression though: https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/02/23/australias-biggest-steelmaker-refines-its-green-steel-plans/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/02/23/australias-... It's an opportunity for Australia. We have the iron ore and we have the solar energy to make electricity and hydrogen. If the world is going have to rebuild its steel making capacity it's a chance to capture some of that.
- 4y ago
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
The one thing that raised an eyebrow for me, is the production of pure oxygen, as a by-product. Pure oxygen is dangerous stuff. Otherwise, cool. Of course, whenever we electrify something, we're just kicking the "carbon cost" down the road, and the means of electrical production become a focus. That said, if we can distill energy to centralized electrical plants, we can apply fairly massive carbon mitigation, at a single point.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  We're talking about steel plants here. They are dealing with a lot of dangerous stuff there. Like tonnes of extremely hot metal in liquid form. A little bit of oxygen is not going to be something that is much of a concern relative to that.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    "A little bit of oxygen is not going to be something that is much of a concern relative to that." It is a concern, exactly because there are so many other hot and dangerous things around in steel production. Blow some oxygen on a fire and see what happens...
    - WJW 4y ago
      This would be a way better argument if modern steelmaking processes didn't quite literally involve blowing oxygen through the molten steel. :) (They do this in order to reduce the carbon content. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_oxygen_steelmaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_oxygen_steelmaking for details if you want to know more, it has a fascinating history)
      - MisterTea 4y ago
        I never get the hand waving types. I think knowing the danger of something is the only bit of knowledge they have on a subject. So prove they understand it they go about lecturing people on how dangerous it is instead of actually understanding the subject. Otherwise they would understand that while dangerous in an uncontrolled environment we understand how to mitigate danger and design/build/use something responsibly. This is why we cant have nice things. Know-it-all danger rangers just ruin it with paranoia and ignorance.
zeristor 4y ago
My understanding is that Donald Safeway was investigating (2005) this as a way of producing metals in space where one can’t really vent gases into the local atmosphere, or have copious amounts of carbon for reduction: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/sadoway_1.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/sadoway... I could be wrong, but couldn’t this be counted as one of the benefits for NASA and research into space?
- hannob 4y ago
  Sadoway is one of the founders of Boston Metal. Boston Metal is mentioned later in the article. It is also an iron oxide electrolysis technology, but a quite different one (high temperature vs. low temperature).
willis936 4y ago
I was first introduced to many real industrial concepts through a minecraft mod. While not perfect, it did a decent job of exposing the player to system dynamics, growth maximization, and real technologies. https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Electric_Blast_Furnace_(GregTech_5) https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Electric_Blast_Furnace_(GregTech... https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Electrolyzer_(GregTech_5) https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Electrolyzer_(GregTech_5) https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Arc_Furnace_(GregTech_5) https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Arc_Furnace_(GregTech_5)
- sandworm101 4y ago
  An I was introduced to the principals of alchemy vie the EE minecraft mod. Then I learned to plug the alchemy blocks into the more industrial mods to prototype some new physics that my current startup is currently pitching to people looking to re-invest their crypto profits. https://technicpack.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Equivalent_Exchange https://technicpack.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Equivalent_Exch...
- willis936 4y ago
  Okay so for the first time since GT5u it looks like real development is being made in the form of GTCEu. I played through the community modpack (sibling repo) pre-steam age yesterday and I gotta say they have really nailed the quest book and balance. I recommend it for anyone interested. https://github.com/GregTechCEu/GregTech https://github.com/GregTechCEu/GregTech
nonethewiser 4y ago
The article says the steel industry accounts for 7% of all emissions, which is quite a bit. Did not realize that. How much of the steel industry is in China? My impression was a very large percentage of it. I wonder if this process would be utilized there. The game there seems to be the cheapest possible steel… not sure this fits into that.
- c54 4y ago
  Part of the story is that solar electricity will soon become (indeed, in many places already is) cheaper than coal or natural gas. China in particular depends on long fragile trade routes from the Middle East for crude oil, and is already the world’s largest producer of solar panels. Technology like this will get to enjoy the plunging cost of solar and wind power.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Was curious about the currently installed amounts: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-solar-power-by-country-in-2021/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-solar-power-by-count... (2021) You can definitely see a divergence between countries that have made it a priority and those that haven't, even per capita. Now that we've had larger deployments for awhile, are there any good number on capacity deterioration over time? Curious what the effective install longevity is.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      https://news.energysage.com/longevity-of-solar/ https://news.energysage.com/longevity-of-solar/ : 0.7 percent degradation per year. That works out at over 80% after 25 years. The inverters need slightly more frequent replacement. The compounding effects on this are going to be dramatic. Everyone who borrowed money at sub-5% rates and then saw retail electricity going up by 50% made a great decision.
      - ethbr0 4y ago
        My thinking, isn't the effective end state that power stabilizes at much lower and without capacity cap solar rates? Previously, worldwide supply expansion = increasing fuel costs in the global market In a post-fuel / solar world, you can keep increasing supply capacity as long as you want. Which would upend a lot of assumptions about power. E.g. free or negative power cost at peak supply times, simply because people keep building capacity
scythe 4y ago
The key to allowing this process to be performed at low temperature appears to be the use of sodium hydroxide as the electrolyte: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/MA2020-02191562mtgabs/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/MA2020-02191562mt... The more well-known approach, performed by Boston Metal which the article mentions, was to use molten iron oxide. I would figure the major question is whether the cost and handling difficulties of NaOH can be overcome. Google shows a bulk price of around $500/ton for NaOH, though its price has spiked recently. This is roughly double the price of pig iron (the first reduction product). So to make this process economical, you need to do a good job of not contaminating (hence replacing) your electrolyte. That's probably why they needed to work with particular grades of iron oxide. NaOH is contaminated by such mundane things as carbon dioxide, silicates, alumina, etc. Hopefully they can figure this out.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > NaOH is contaminated by such mundane things as carbon dioxide, silicates, alumina .. all of which you might find in iron ore, unfortunately. I guess that's why they're using it to recycle rather than from ores.
photochemsyn 4y ago
As far as fossil-fuel-free steel goes, this technology is a competitor to direct hydrogen reduction. A side-by-side comparison would be interesting (i.e. is it cheaper to use electricity to make hydrogen to feed into DHR, or just use the electricity directly in this manner?): https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/the-path-to-green-steel-could-be-hydrogen.html https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/the-path-to-green-s...
DeathArrow 4y ago
What about the costs of the process? How do they compare with the classical process?
denton-scratch 4y ago
> In the Siderwin plant, the iron oxide is dissolved in a solution between a nickel anode and a carbon cathode. Dissolved in what solution? That's got to be an aggressive solvent, so what is the waste this process produces?
462436347 4y ago
Over 70% of steel produced in the US is already produced from scrap and electricity with Electric Arc Furnances (EAFs): https://www.steel.org/steel-technology/steel-production/ https://www.steel.org/steel-technology/steel-production/
supsep2 4y ago
Salcos is leading the way for this low carbon steel.

140 points by hannob 4y ago

> ... In other words: Pure electricity is used to split iron oxide into its elements. ... > ...the iron oxide is dissolved in a solution between a nickel anode and a carbon cathode. ... > ...operates on relatively low temperatures of around 110 °C. ... IANACE (Not A Chemical Engineer), but dissolving iron oxide at 110 °C sounds to me like they'll be using some fairly nasty chemicals, at scale. Which chemicals will have their own environmental & safety issues, etc.

burnished 4y ago
Sodium hydroxide in water.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  So pretty harmless (in context) itself. Might you have any sense for the waste product stream (from the NaOH and impurities in the real-world iron ore), and its major issues?
  - pjc50 4y ago
    NaOH is the classic drain cleaner. You wouldn't want to just dump it in the river, but it's dilutable/neutralizable to harmlessness. Handily, it also reacts (slowly) with CO2 directly out of the air to harmless sodium carbonate. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405656116300578 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240565611... The rest of the waste stream is just slag. That's just dumped in big piles in the open air https://www.usgs.gov/news/science-snippet/slag-what-it-good https://www.usgs.gov/news/science-snippet/slag-what-it-good , although occasionally someone proposes going through it again for different minerals such as rare earths.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

That's really a good field for research right now, because like Jancovici notes in his conf (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQBPhKSWu0&list=PLMDQXkItOZ4II_sYvh0BevIBwmm7fvuHL&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQBPhKSWu0&list=PLMDQXkItOZ...) that we currently price renewable energy in a world where oil is abundant. But once you have to create your wind turbine, solar panels and battery with electricity from wind turbines and solar panels, the price gets very different.

u320 4y ago
Yes it gets more expensive.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
How does that add up if he's a proponent of replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power? Won't that get more expensive too? He's a weird one, as he's generally on board with consensus climate change, but he's always had a bee in his bonnet about renewables, making lots of claims that haven't came true. Could we live as today with just renewable energy? (2005) https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/could-we-live-as-today-with-just-renewable-energy/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/could-...
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  > How does that add up if he's a proponent of replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power? > Won't that get more expensive too? Yes, that's the whole point of the conference. Fossil fuels are magical. And at some point, we won't have them anymore. > He's a weird one, as he's generally on board with consensus climate change, but he's always had a bee in his bonnet about renewables, making lots of claims that haven't came true. Jancovici doens't make timed predictions, so I can't see how this can be true. A makes statements about how things are, starting from first principles. The only thing he did insist on some time period was the fact we will cross the +2C°, at some point in the next decades. We are well on track for that.

londons_explore 4y ago

This demonstrates that the tech is near to being usable at scale. The thing that doesn't add up is the price... While coal is still usable as an energy source for making steel, it doesn't make sense to use electricity. And if one country outlaws using coal for steelmaking, then steelmakers will just move to another country - steelmaking is ferociously competitive, and lots of countries subsidise steelmaking because it is strategically important. This tech will remain on the sidelines for 'green' projects only until there is some kind of worldwide carbon tax/cap/quota system.

awestroke 4y ago
There is massive investment happening in green steel production. There is a high demand for green steel from car manufacturers among others. It's easy to dismiss anything out of ignorance, but it only amounts to misinformation
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Car manufacturers at the moment are happy with "100% recycled with carbon free processes" for their steel. That means you take scrap steel, put it in an electric arc furnace, and power that furnace with matching wind/solar contracts. So far, carmaking uses less steel than comes into recycling plants, so it hasn't really caused any change in the market.
  - Danieru 4y ago
    Are you basing this on real knowledge or a guess？ My understanding, from when I lightly researched Japan Steel as a stock, was that car makers want fresh steel with higher guaranteed performance. Thus they can use less steel and reduce weight. Since vehicles are mobile the reduced weight will have a much bigger carbon reduction than from using recycled steel.
    - steve76 4y ago
      [dead]

riedel 4y ago

The headline is a bit misleading since 42% of steel production [1] in Europe is already done using an electric arc furnace (i.e. electricity) . However, this is mostly recycling [2] [1] http://www.eurofer.org/201605-ESF.pdf?wtd=YC9cwLHyOWxX6JJD&request=resource&resource=o6yivpp&rand=6 http://www.eurofer.org/201605-ESF.pdf?wtd=YC9cwLHyOWxX6JJD&r... [2] https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace?lang=en https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace?la...

ginko 4y ago
Those still add coke or coal as a reducing agent though so it's not carbon neutral.
londons_explore 4y ago
In my view, the steel industry deliberately confuses arc furnaces (mostly used for recycling steel - effectively just melting it down) with making new steel in blast furnaces. This lets them do things like claim "steel made in USA" when in fact the steel was made in China, then brought to the USA, melted in an arc furnace, and suddenly it's "made in USA"! I suspect there are people chucking brand new steel into an arc furnace simply to change its origin country, and to take government subsidies for setting up new 'steel factories'. It also conveniently works around steel import tariffs - because you actually import 'scrap' steel, tariff free.
- simplotek 4y ago
  > (...) brought to the USA, melted in an arc furnace, and suddenly it's "made in USA"! I don't think this assertion makes sense. Making steel is way more than getting iron and mixing it up with some carbon. You need special manufacturing processes to get specific alloys and treatments to get the properties and reliability you expect. Recycling and importing steel is like importing a raw material. Your comment reads like "This let's them do things like claim burger made in USA when in fact the burger buns were made with corn from Ukraine and meat from Argentina".
  - 4y ago

pjc50 4y ago

A bit of digging found what I think is the right technical data for the "siderwin" process based on "ulcowin": https://energy.nl/media/data/Ulcowin-Technology-Factsheet_080920.pdf https://energy.nl/media/data/Ulcowin-Technology-Factsheet_08... A couple of other side features to raise the feasibility: using waste as input "the most promising material tested was mill scale, a waste product from steel processing" and "Part of the Siderwin concept is the idea that the technology can be used as a flexibility option in the electricity market." (i.e. get demand-flexibility payments from being able to turn off a large electricity sink easily)

londons_explore 4y ago
Mill scale is easily recycled in blast furnaces or direct reduction furnaces today... It isn't a way to turn a useless waste product into something valuable that it sounds like.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  The point is to reduce carbon emissions. If there's something that is currently being done with carbon outputs, than can be done without, then that's a good thing.

jimmcslim 4y ago

Meanwhile here in Australia many of us are under the impression that while we may run out of buyers for our thermal coal we will still have a market for our metallurgical coal… “the lucky country” indeed

anonylizard 4y ago
You know Australia has the highest % of power generated by solar of any country? You know Australia is the biggest lithium exporter? You know Australia has copper, rare earths, all required for renewable energy? You know Australia also exports the most IRON, a necessary ingredient for steel, right? Where does this delusion that Australia isn't lucky come from?
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  The same also goes for Russia. Despite exporting tons of fossil fuels their own electric grid is relatively green mostly due to nuclear power. They also are a major exporter of nuclear tech, which was not sanctioned at all.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Well, one unlucky aspect is the lack of any succesful politician that can absorb that widely available info and combine it to make Australia into an exporter of high value, green products from higher up the supply chain. Bit of a "resource curse" thing at the moment, where you can dig up the wealth and ship it out the country without necessarily enriching the wider population as much as you'd think.
femto 4y ago
Others aren't under that impression though: https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/02/23/australias-biggest-steelmaker-refines-its-green-steel-plans/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/02/23/australias-... It's an opportunity for Australia. We have the iron ore and we have the solar energy to make electricity and hydrogen. If the world is going have to rebuild its steel making capacity it's a chance to capture some of that.
4y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

The one thing that raised an eyebrow for me, is the production of pure oxygen, as a by-product. Pure oxygen is dangerous stuff. Otherwise, cool. Of course, whenever we electrify something, we're just kicking the "carbon cost" down the road, and the means of electrical production become a focus. That said, if we can distill energy to centralized electrical plants, we can apply fairly massive carbon mitigation, at a single point.

jillesvangurp 4y ago
We're talking about steel plants here. They are dealing with a lot of dangerous stuff there. Like tonnes of extremely hot metal in liquid form. A little bit of oxygen is not going to be something that is much of a concern relative to that.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "A little bit of oxygen is not going to be something that is much of a concern relative to that." It is a concern, exactly because there are so many other hot and dangerous things around in steel production. Blow some oxygen on a fire and see what happens...
  - WJW 4y ago
    This would be a way better argument if modern steelmaking processes didn't quite literally involve blowing oxygen through the molten steel. :) (They do this in order to reduce the carbon content. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_oxygen_steelmaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_oxygen_steelmaking for details if you want to know more, it has a fascinating history)
    - MisterTea 4y ago
      I never get the hand waving types. I think knowing the danger of something is the only bit of knowledge they have on a subject. So prove they understand it they go about lecturing people on how dangerous it is instead of actually understanding the subject. Otherwise they would understand that while dangerous in an uncontrolled environment we understand how to mitigate danger and design/build/use something responsibly. This is why we cant have nice things. Know-it-all danger rangers just ruin it with paranoia and ignorance.

zeristor 4y ago

My understanding is that Donald Safeway was investigating (2005) this as a way of producing metals in space where one can’t really vent gases into the local atmosphere, or have copious amounts of carbon for reduction: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/sadoway_1.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/sadoway... I could be wrong, but couldn’t this be counted as one of the benefits for NASA and research into space?

hannob 4y ago
Sadoway is one of the founders of Boston Metal. Boston Metal is mentioned later in the article. It is also an iron oxide electrolysis technology, but a quite different one (high temperature vs. low temperature).

willis936 4y ago

I was first introduced to many real industrial concepts through a minecraft mod. While not perfect, it did a decent job of exposing the player to system dynamics, growth maximization, and real technologies. https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Electric_Blast_Furnace_(GregTech_5) https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Electric_Blast_Furnace_(GregTech... https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Electrolyzer_(GregTech_5) https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Electrolyzer_(GregTech_5) https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Arc_Furnace_(GregTech_5) https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Arc_Furnace_(GregTech_5)

sandworm101 4y ago
An I was introduced to the principals of alchemy vie the EE minecraft mod. Then I learned to plug the alchemy blocks into the more industrial mods to prototype some new physics that my current startup is currently pitching to people looking to re-invest their crypto profits. https://technicpack.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Equivalent_Exchange https://technicpack.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Equivalent_Exch...
willis936 4y ago
Okay so for the first time since GT5u it looks like real development is being made in the form of GTCEu. I played through the community modpack (sibling repo) pre-steam age yesterday and I gotta say they have really nailed the quest book and balance. I recommend it for anyone interested. https://github.com/GregTechCEu/GregTech https://github.com/GregTechCEu/GregTech

nonethewiser 4y ago

The article says the steel industry accounts for 7% of all emissions, which is quite a bit. Did not realize that. How much of the steel industry is in China? My impression was a very large percentage of it. I wonder if this process would be utilized there. The game there seems to be the cheapest possible steel… not sure this fits into that.

c54 4y ago
Part of the story is that solar electricity will soon become (indeed, in many places already is) cheaper than coal or natural gas. China in particular depends on long fragile trade routes from the Middle East for crude oil, and is already the world’s largest producer of solar panels. Technology like this will get to enjoy the plunging cost of solar and wind power.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Was curious about the currently installed amounts: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-solar-power-by-country-in-2021/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-solar-power-by-count... (2021) You can definitely see a divergence between countries that have made it a priority and those that haven't, even per capita. Now that we've had larger deployments for awhile, are there any good number on capacity deterioration over time? Curious what the effective install longevity is.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    https://news.energysage.com/longevity-of-solar/ https://news.energysage.com/longevity-of-solar/ : 0.7 percent degradation per year. That works out at over 80% after 25 years. The inverters need slightly more frequent replacement. The compounding effects on this are going to be dramatic. Everyone who borrowed money at sub-5% rates and then saw retail electricity going up by 50% made a great decision.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      My thinking, isn't the effective end state that power stabilizes at much lower and without capacity cap solar rates? Previously, worldwide supply expansion = increasing fuel costs in the global market In a post-fuel / solar world, you can keep increasing supply capacity as long as you want. Which would upend a lot of assumptions about power. E.g. free or negative power cost at peak supply times, simply because people keep building capacity

scythe 4y ago

The key to allowing this process to be performed at low temperature appears to be the use of sodium hydroxide as the electrolyte: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/MA2020-02191562mtgabs/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/MA2020-02191562mt... The more well-known approach, performed by Boston Metal which the article mentions, was to use molten iron oxide. I would figure the major question is whether the cost and handling difficulties of NaOH can be overcome. Google shows a bulk price of around $500/ton for NaOH, though its price has spiked recently. This is roughly double the price of pig iron (the first reduction product). So to make this process economical, you need to do a good job of not contaminating (hence replacing) your electrolyte. That's probably why they needed to work with particular grades of iron oxide. NaOH is contaminated by such mundane things as carbon dioxide, silicates, alumina, etc. Hopefully they can figure this out.

pjc50 4y ago
> NaOH is contaminated by such mundane things as carbon dioxide, silicates, alumina .. all of which you might find in iron ore, unfortunately. I guess that's why they're using it to recycle rather than from ores.

photochemsyn 4y ago

As far as fossil-fuel-free steel goes, this technology is a competitor to direct hydrogen reduction. A side-by-side comparison would be interesting (i.e. is it cheaper to use electricity to make hydrogen to feed into DHR, or just use the electricity directly in this manner?): https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/the-path-to-green-steel-could-be-hydrogen.html https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/the-path-to-green-s...

DeathArrow 4y ago

What about the costs of the process? How do they compare with the classical process?

denton-scratch 4y ago

> In the Siderwin plant, the iron oxide is dissolved in a solution between a nickel anode and a carbon cathode. Dissolved in what solution? That's got to be an aggressive solvent, so what is the waste this process produces?

462436347 4y ago

Over 70% of steel produced in the US is already produced from scrap and electricity with Electric Arc Furnances (EAFs): https://www.steel.org/steel-technology/steel-production/ https://www.steel.org/steel-technology/steel-production/

supsep2 4y ago

Salcos is leading the way for this low carbon steel.