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Iron fuel shows its mettle
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoDoesn't this seem like we are just going to use up iron supplies. Iron would then become a used up commodity and drive up prices. Just like when Corn was used for ethanol, the side effect was driving up corn prices, and raising food prices. This could use up Iron, and then impact a ton of stuff. EDIT Missed this: "This can later be reduced—that is, the oxygen can be stripped away—back into iron powder. “You can think of iron fuel as a clean, recyclable coal,” says Bergthorson." So guess it's all good.
- RajT88 3y agoThe iron mining biz would probably expand, pushing prices down. Iron is just everywhere. I can go out in my back yard and find rocks which contain ore.
- Arubis 3y agoIf we have to pick a natural resource to exploit for fuel, iron is a good choice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements#Crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem...
- bioemerl 3y agoIron is one of the most abundant elements on earth, but also we aren't going to be burning it like we do fuels now. Instead we would produce pure iron using green power and oxidize it back to it's natural state for energy in a cycle. Imagine loading an iron rod into your car, driving for a while, and then when you get into the gas station you dump a pile of rust off and buy a fresh iron bar.
- neolefty 3y agoSome societal implications: * Kids playing with iron filings sounds a lot safer than kids playing with gasoline. "Don't leave your magnets in the fuel tank; it clogs up the lines!" * The gasoline party scene in Zoolander would need to be reconsidered.
- schwabacher 3y agoIs iron a potential replacement for coal in steel and cement production?
- droopyEyelids 3y agoit could be, but like other posters have mentioned, it takes a lot of energy to mine and refine the iron so it'd be in a usable state. I think it's easiest to think of iron as another energy storage medium that could ease the peaks of renewable energy, by taking excess renewable energy to generate the iron, and oxidizing the iron for energy generation during peak demand periods with low renewable generation It's like hydrogen in that way.
- adrianN 3y agoMaking steel from ore using iron seems a bit weird. If you already have a method to reduce the oxide, why not use it on the ore?
- wolverine876 3y agoSteel in principle is iron + carbon.
- usrusr 3y agoI used to be very excited about the iron cycle when the first news about that brewery appeared. But these days I wonder how useful it really is, as an energy store? Won't it start oxidating at room temperature unless kept in inert atmosphere? And if that's a requirement, is it really that much less trouble than plain H2 or some gaseous or liquid intermediate?
- moffkalast 3y agoThe trouble level for H2 is reasonably high, so it could very well be less.
- csours 3y agoYes, and gasoline will evaporate, natural gas will disperse, etc. It's kept in a container until they burn it.
- usrusr 3y agoSure, but liquids and gases are routinely handled in vessels with a maintenance interval of "never" on the inside, I'm not so sure that could be transferred to a powder. But this might be my lack of knowledge of existing processes in "powdery industries" speaking, if those are solved problems there I would not know. Your mention of gasoline evaporating made me realize that some of the iron oxidating is probably not all that bad, just make sure that there's no ventilation continuously swapping in fresh air. I guess I'm looking forward to the next iron age!
- csours 3y agoHandling iron particulate is well-established technology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZHpeBubb_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZHpeBubb_M Note that this is about when it goes wrong, but also that it is usually due to cost-cutting measures.
- thsksbd 3y agoThere's the kinetics of oxygen transport into a big pile of iron powder. If that's not good enough, you can always transport it in a closed container with a block of dry ice. You don't even have to seal it, just change the chemical potential of O2 in Fe.
- ermir 3y agoIron is not widely available in nature as a ready-to-use element, it must be processed into elemental iron, which takes a lot of energy as input. Therefore this can't be really considered as fuel, more like energy storage. You still need fossil fuels or nuclear power to turn iron ores into iron, then you have iron available for the process described in the article. I'm not criticizing the process, but it's not accurate to call it "fuel" like it could be the solution to replacing fossil fuels.
- c0nsumer 3y agoThe article says this. It wraps up with: "If these problems can be overcome, you could use renewable electricity to produce iron, store it as long as necessary, transport it there and then burn it for power when needed, says Bergthorson. “Places that have excess energy could make iron, and others can buy it. This way, you could commodify renewable energy so it can be globally distributed without the need for transmission lines. Metals can solve a big problem in the renewable energy transition: long-duration energy storage.”"
- intothemild 3y agoSure you could use renewables to make iron. But that thought process also extends to other methods too. You could use renewables to make other non renewable fuels. Why not just skip the middleman? Use renewables?
- kinnth 3y agoRenewables are exceedingly bad at storing energy for times when sun or wind isn't blowing so you always need a mix.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoThat's not a wind or sun problem, that's a battery and transmission problem.
- slashdev 3y ago
- j-a-a-p 3y agoLooks like the same thing as Form Energy provides. They are selling plants at MW level (article is about a small brewery at kW level) https://formenergy.com/ https://formenergy.com/
- olau 3y agoForm Energy is a bit light on details, but it looks like they are using a water based electrolyte, add oxygen, get electric power and rust when discharging, then add electric power and get iron and oxygen when charging. The project mentioned here is setting the iron powder on fire and need to use a steam turbine to get electric power out of it. So different tech.
- j-a-a-p 3y ago> Our first commercial product is an iron-air battery capable of storing electricity for 100 hours at system costs competitive with legacy power plants. https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/ https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/ But yes, I was triggered with iron alone, but they both seem to burn iron. There is a whole industry of flow batteries emerging also.
- wongarsu 3y ago> “You can think of iron fuel as a clean, recyclable coal,” says Bergthorson. I was under the impression that basically all naturally found iron is in the form of iron oxide. Which means you first have to put in energy to reduce it to pure iron, to then burn it and turn it back to iron oxide. That's much closer to what a battery does, or hydrogen, than it is to coal. I imagine it's still useful in many applications since hydrogen is a pain to store and transport.
- treadmill 3y ago> iron oxide. Which means you first have to put in energy to reduce it to pure iron And the article doesn't even hint at any way to do this using renewable energy. Which makes me suspect that no such process exists.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoIt would be fun if our next major technology stage is the "iron age".
- obblekk 3y ago> 0.3% of the Iron-oxide becomes nanoparticles which cannot be converted back into Iron. At that rate, 50% of the initial iron will be gone in 333 cycles of iron -> iron oxide -> iron. This a hard type of energy source to reason about: 1. It's not a pure fuel and acts like a battery most of the time, but it's also not renewable 2. Iron is extremely abundant on Earth, but it requires mining and processing to extract 3. Iron oxide in nanoparticle size would likely be a pollutant and hazardous to human health, not something that will break down quickly and harmlessly. The high fuel density and low explosiveness may make it a good use case in some niches, but I imagine it's actually more scalable and healthy to burn jet fuel and reproduce it from renewable powered carbon capture, where density is needed.
- proto-n 3y agoIs iron oxide magnetic in nanoparticle size? Because if it is, then we can probably very efficiently filter it before releasing it into the atmosphere.
- juujian 3y agoThe article mentions a HEPA filter.
- sudhirj 3y agoThat’s still a mess, if the particles are magnetic a magnet will be a way cleaner and more effective filter.
- sacnoradhq 3y agoUnfortunately, you're mistaken. In practice, iron(iii) oxide is barely paramagnetic and the particles are likely well above the Curie point and possibly at the melting point.
- thsksbd 3y agoiron oxide magnetic properties depend on its oxidation state, temperature and particle size.
- jacknews 3y agoThis makes no sense to me. Iron/steel production is one of the largest individual sources of co2 emissions and uses a lot of energy. And then to just burn it back into iron ore for energy - At best you'll only get back the energy you expended to refine it in the first place. Assuming they are burning scrap, it would surely be better to melt it down and recycle it as steel. As energy storage, it may well have more energy per liter than gasoline, but it weighs many times more. There are surely better options - even in the same category, eg aluminium?
- neolefty 3y agoTrue, if we're getting it the traditional way. Fortunately, iron oxide can be reduced using hydrogen. In the article, they conclude that the system cost of shipping iron and iron oxide back and forth from an electrolysis facility (presumably from renewables) is lower than using hydrogen directly as a fuel.
- OrbitalPewPew 3y agoImagine thinking that a material stars can't use for fuel is one that makes sense as a "renewable energy source." These idiots need to go back and take undergraduate thermodynamics.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoConfusing chemistry with fusion there.
- OrbitalPewPew 3y ago[flagged]
- thsksbd 3y agoStars cant use Fe's chemical energy because they're too hot and the entropy of not being bound to O2 is too high. (And Fe is a trace element). No one is talking about using Fe as fuel in a nuclear reactor, or (even though the article muddles this) as a primary source of chemical energy. Its a battery. A heavy, big battery.
- skyechurch 3y agoYou can't extract energy from iron by nuclear fusion, which is how stars "burn" fuel, but this is a chemical process, Fe + O2 => (some Fe&O compound) + energy.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoSkipping class to play with thermite was, in retrospect, an educationally sound decision.
- PaulHoule 3y agoSee also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_looping_combustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_looping_combustion
- Tade0 3y ago> “Places that have excess energy could make iron, and others can buy it. This way, you could commodify renewable energy so it can be globally distributed without the need for transmission lines. Metals can solve a big problem in the renewable energy transition: long-duration energy storage.” My gut feeling is that transmission lines would still be cheaper. That being said long-term storage seems to be the value proposition here. In my corner of the world coal is still frequently used to heat homes during winter. A single house uses around 4-6 tonnes of the stuff each season. This heap of coal takes a significant amount of space. If my back of the napkin calculations are correct, the energy equivalent in iron dust would be half the volume. Of course there's the issue of weight - about 5x that of coal, but perhaps the cost of moving all that iron could be somewhat mitigated by having a rust reprocessing plant in the neighbourhood.
- chasil 3y ago"Altiro gets around this problem by adding a little natural gas to ignite the iron powder when the boiler first starts up." You will also need a very specialized furnace, and supplies of CH4.
- Tade0 3y agoI suppose it's not more complicated than an LPG system in a car, which fires up on gasoline and switches to gas only after warm-up. My Uber today was a Corolla hybrid and at one point I heard the telltale clunk of the LPG system engaging. Apparently you can have that on a hybrid as well.
- samus 3y agoThe demand for natural gas is probably minuscule compared to the total heat output of a burning cycle. Also, thanks to the war in Ukraine, demand for natural gas might decline in the long term if European countries switch to alternative, hopefully greener, energy sources.
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- SmooL 3y ago
- rcme 3y agoIs iron oxide really that much more volumous than iron? In terms of capturing the iron oxide, why couldn’t this be run in a sealed container with a valve that allows oxygen in? This doesn’t work for hydrocarbons because the volume of CO2 is orders of magnitude greater than the volume of fuel, but does iron oxide have the same issue?
- MauranKilom 3y agoI vaguely remember that continuous processes are strongly preferred over batch processes. Especially for such things as "provide energy".
- rfreytag 3y agoI assume they are using renewable energy to reduce naturally-occurring iron oxide. When the iron is burnt are they going to do with pure oxygen? Otherwise they'll get pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, possibly ozone. And the 0.5% not burnt will also become a pollutant unless carefully removed in some smokestack scrubber. Or is this 'burning' to occur some kind of iron fuel cell? How would they liquidize the iron which is quite heavy? Lastly, iron is heavy. Moving reduced iron could be expensive and dangerous. Still, if sufficiently close to the renewable source this could provide much needed load leveling for intermittent sources.
- samus 3y agoThe article assumes the viability of a hydrogen-driven process to reduce the iron. The intention is to establish a circular economy of reducing iron oxidized by burning it in the proposed fashion. The byproducts from burning iron are no more noxious than burning fossil fuels, possibly less so. Filtration technologies exist as well. Of course this technology would have to compete with other technologies to make use of excess renewable energy, like liquid hydrogen storage and transport (which it has several advantages over), iron-based battery technologies, or green-produced carbon-based fuels. I guess it makes the most sense in applications where heat instead of electricity is required.
- _hypx 3y ago> Of course this technology would have to compete with other technologies to make use of excess renewable energy, like liquid hydrogen storage and transport (which it has several advantages over), iron-based battery technologies, or green-produced carbon-based fuels. I guess it makes the most sense in applications where heat instead of electricity is required. I'm going to come out and say those competing technologies are vastly more plausible and viable.
- SamPatt 3y agoRequiring natural gas to work makes me a bit skeptical. They don't indicate how significant the nat gas component is, but if prices are low, it will be much simpler and cheaper to just use the gas itself.
- AlbertCory 3y agoThere's an experiment in here where Theodore Gray "burns" iron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMJtieqVUc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMJtieqVUc4 I hosted this. Getting permission from the Building department to have fire indoors was lotsa fun.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoThe lecture looks interesting, but if you want to skip to the burning stuff part: https://youtu.be/NMJtieqVUc4?t=2587 https://youtu.be/NMJtieqVUc4?t=2587 I learned that stainless steel burns the hard way. You can use stainless steel scrubby pads as a heat sink to vaporize DMT in a contraption called "the machine". Naively, I thought steel wool would work instead of the scrubby pad. It doesn't. The fibers are too small and it ignites--pretty much exactly the opposite of what you want in a vape.
- AlbertCory 3y agoPro tip: do Show Transcript to skip around a YT video. Find the words you want, then click it.
- alex_young 3y agoIf they require Hydrogen to complete the loop, you're going to create a lot of CO2 in the process. 4% of H is produced using renewables today: https://rmi.org/the-truth-about-hydrogen/ https://rmi.org/the-truth-about-hydrogen/
- TSiege 3y agoYes. "Green hydrogen" is largely vaporware at this point. The majority of hydrogen we produce is from fossil methane
- scythe 3y agoSimilar proposals have been made previously, particularly for boron, which has ten times the energy density of iron, and yet similar low combustibility: http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html
- GlibMonkeyDeath 3y agoSounds like one of the least efficient energy storage ideas I've heard in a long time, I wonder how this is getting funded? Hmm, let's check to see who is behind this...the founding professor https://www.tue.nl/en/research/researchers/philip-de-goey/ https://www.tue.nl/en/research/researchers/philip-de-goey/ is a fellow/awardee of the Combustion Institute, gets funding from ERC, etc. OK, so I guess all that European taxpayer money won't spend itself, and if you have a hammer blah blah nails... Meanwhile, stationary class (i.e. relatively poor energy density) iron air batteries are making commercial progress. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/06/12/form-energy-to-deploy-100-hour-iron-air-battery-system-in-georgia/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/06/12/form-energy-to-deploy...
- volkl48 3y ago> Meanwhile, stationary class (i.e. relatively poor energy density) iron air batteries are making commercial progress. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/06/12/form-energy-to-deploy https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/06/12/form-energy-to-deploy... Also seems worth mentioning ESS. https://essinc.com/ https://essinc.com/ They're a bit further along (scaling up from low-volume production, some installs in the wild) with a different approach to the use of iron (flow batteries).
- scythe 3y agoESS should not be mentioned except as an example of how prone the green news cycle is to fraud. As I detailed last year, their claims are highly dubious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31430227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31430227 (previously I misspelled the last name of Sri Narayanan as "Narayan", for which I belatedly apologize) And that prediction was substantiated when they were subject to a class-action shareholder lawsuit in February involving a fabricated customer which was actually a subsidiary: https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2023-03-10/the-law-offices-of-frank-r-cruz-reminds-investors-of-looming-deadline-in-the-class-action-lawsuit-against-ess-tech-inc-gwh https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2023-03-10/the-law-... The other shoe has yet to drop, but I suggest that any battery company without publications should be considered with appropriate salinity.
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- jokoon 3y agoAt that rate, there should be an encyclopedia dedicated to all projects that can be described as greenwashing. I think it's a new strategy to "drown the fish", by flooding the media with "green" technologies just to pretend to say "we heard you, we are going to change the world with green new things" only to save more time until everybody realize each of those new projects are just not viable. The air travel sector seems to be rife with this. Who could have guessed that snake oil could work in something as serious as the energy sector, I'm really surprised it's getting so low. I'm going to be brutally honest, but you even hear people from first world countries playing the poverty card when you tell them they should stop driving alone in a 1 ton vehicle, and it seems sobriety and de-growth will have to convince those people that fossil fuels are a privilege, not a right. I can bet that we are going to see people sabotaging cars, gas stations and refineries pretty soon if nothing is done. Greta Thunberg will be 25 soon and a whole generation will not tolerate more lies.
- unwind 3y agoOkay, but it would be more helpful if you provided some actual arguments against the technology.
- cyberax 3y agoIt's another "use energy/hydrogen to create a fuel" technology. This one creates a very inconvenient fuel: iron powder. It can't be efficiently piped, and it needs some very strange technology to make it burn in controlled conditions. And you cannot use it for gas turbines or piston-based engines. At this point, if you have hydrogen, you can just use it to produce methane that has none of these problems. Or maybe ammonia if we ever get catalysts working at mild conditions.
- concordDance 3y agoWhile it's very true that greenwashing is a thing, bans on fossil fuels are not the right approach. You need sin taxes that account for the cost of the externalities instead. A CO2 tax is sensible, "degrowth" is a horrific thing that will kill billions.
- howlin 3y agoI don't really understand why iron is being considered over aluminum. Is aluminum production from ore too complex compared to iron? I would have to imagine burning metallic aluminum produces much more energy per gram.
- chewbacha 3y agoMy gut is to assume that aluminum isn't as viable because it does _not_ oxidize as readily as iron does.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoAluminum definitely oxidizes extremely well. Most of the aluminum you come in constant with is oxidized intentionally (anodizing). It’s just a ridiculously expensive metal to make. Look up how much alumina is minded all over the world, how it’s shipped to Iceland for processing because of their cheap geothermal electricity, then shipped to China to processing, then shipped back around the world to final destination. It’s crazy.
- samus 3y agoAluminium production is complex and might be less efficient per kilogram than iron production. Also, compared to iron there are no known processes to employ hydrogen, which can be had from green-ish sources, in aluminium production.
- thescriptkiddie 3y ago> Iron oxide can also be reduced to iron using hydrogen > Altiro gets around this problem by adding a little natural gas This is transparently just green washing from the fossil fuel industry. There is no way that this will be an efficient energy storage mechanism and it definitely won't be carbon neutral. Developing cost-effective methods to produce steel from iron ore without the use of coke (coal) is important, but if you want to do that just do that.
- samus 3y agoThe natural gas is used to help starting and stabilizing the flame. Actual use of natural gas is probably negligible to the total output of the process.
- photochemsyn 3y agoSeems like a niche technology, useful if you're sitting on tons of scrap iron for example. I recall some proposals for using this in long-distance cargo shipping instead of very dirty (and fossil-sourced) bunker fuel, but even there synthetic diesel or methane from atmospheric CO2 + water might be the more versatile solution (and the overall mass of the iron required for say, a trans-Pacific journey is an issue). See: https://swzmaritime.nl/news/2020/02/27/why-iron-could-be-a-suitable-future-marine-fuel/ https://swzmaritime.nl/news/2020/02/27/why-iron-could-be-a-s... > "A disadvantage of iron as a fuel for ships is the relatively high specific mass of iron powder and the increase in the weight of the iron oxide that is produced during combustion. As a result, a ship will lie deeper and deeper during the voyage." They seem to have a prototype in the works c. 2030.
- hankman86 3y agoOr you just use the iron to build more towers for wind turbines. Or transmission lines to send renewable electricity to where it is needed.
- samus 3y agoThere is no shortage of iron, while this is another way to make usage of abundant renewable energy. Especially when at the destination actually heat is required. Apart from that, neither wind turbines nor more transmission lines help with the problem of making excess energy available for future use.
- mrguyorama 3y agoUsing electricity to run a heat pump will beat combustion in efficiency, and that only becomes way more true when the energy source starts as electricity being sunk into creating a synthetic fuel.
- samus 3y agoWhile that is probably true, the problem still exists that renewables produce a lot of electricity when there is not enough demand for it. Iron combustion is a solution for that problem.
- bbojan 3y agoThe elephant in the room are, as always, nitrous oxides (NOx). Whenever you burn something in a nitrogen atmosphere, NOx are created. They contribute to acid rain and the formation of smog, and are a trigger for asthma.
- samus 3y agoWhile certainly being an issue, they are a far smaller problem than emissions of greenhouse gases by fossil power sources. It is a greenhouse gas itself, but most human emissions come from agriculture. Moreover, there are technologies to reduce the emission of NOx'es from burning processes.
- dredmorbius 3y agoFrom a global-warming perspective, NOx also has a fairly short residency-time, as I understand. Yes, it's an environmental concern for other reasons, but focusing on greenhouse considerations is fairly reasonable.
- bilsbie 3y agoGOOD Point by my wife. Could this be done with aluminum instead of iron?
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoComparing petrol with iron based on volume rather than weight seems highly misleading. I’m assuming that actual energy density is much worse with iron right?
- dredmorbius 3y agoIt really depends, principally on what your extant constraints are. For some applications, mass is a critical concern (e.g., powered aircraft). For others, it's volume, say, powerplant + fuel stores aboard a marine vessel. As I'm understanding this proposal, the iron is largely recycled, so transport of iron is relatively minimised. The concern is how much iron is required on site, and what the plant-sizing characteristics are given that. Though of course, in any public communication of novel research and technological proposals, there's a significant amount of PR, spin, and narrative-spinning, so it's fair to be skeptical.
- scottLobster 3y agoAnd just like articles about hydrogen, no mention of the extraction/distribution supply chains needed or the costs/emissions involved. Nope, just focus on our fancy (ZERO EMISSION) generator and ignore how the inputs are actually produced. It has the energy density of coal, only unlike coal it requires both mines as well as smelters/processing facilities to produce the iron powder. So this can only work if we build out twice the infrastructure that coal currently enjoys, with all the costs and emissions therein. I'm so tired of breathless scientific reporting of "breakthroughs" that ignores any and all economic context. Or, like this article, treats it as a side issue to be addressed with literally one sentence.
- pankajdoharey 3y agoThis is another Aluminium Air battery, same concept different metal. None of them considers splitting water is energy intensive and inefficient. Another hydrogen fool cell category fuel imo.
- throwway120385 3y agoWho cares if it's energy intensive or inefficient if our other option for using the energy is to run it through a big resistor or to not produce it in the first place? This is a tool for repeatedly storing and releasing excess energy from power plants that can't control their output in response to grid conditions. Let's supposed for the sake of argument that battery banks were prohibitively expensive in some applications, and that hydroelectric storage was too damaging to the local environment. In those cases, your only option is to either dissipate any excess energy or to not produce it in the first place. What this does, then, is provide you an alternative storage medium that is relatively inert until you want to use it. And it provides you a simple self-sustatining scalable chemical reaction that can be started by supplying some initial heat and then goes on to produce even more heat steadily and continuously until you run out of fuel.
- VadimPR 3y agoWe are already using the most economically viable option. The trouble is that it's not sustainable long term. The solution then will not be the most economical one.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago“it’s more efficient to produce iron from hydrogen gas than to produce liquid hydrogen. So iron powder as fuel is more expensive than gaseous hydrogen but cheaper to produce and move across the oceans than liquid hydrogen.” He's saying liquid hydrogen, but I gotta wonder if the the real story here is an attempt to deal with moving the energy in natural gas, since the liquified natural gas story is so shitty (expensive facilities, etc.) and pipelines are politically and logistically difficult. I would not be surprised to see this turned into a "burn/process natural gas (in North America etc) to produce the iron 'fuel'. Ship the iron by train or boat & skip building pipelines and tankers and LNG facilities." Which gets us no further on the climate change front, but answers certain current European (esp German) ... political / economic ... problems.
- elcritch 3y agoInteresting, one benefit of such infrastructure would be that it could transition smoothly to using renewables. I believe it's possible to extract "Grey" hydrogen from LPG so it might not require burning, though it'd still release co2.
- antisthenes 3y agoHow/why is this better than molten salt energy storage?
- eddyzh 3y agoYou can store the oxidized iron on a heap outside indefinitely.
- wolverine876 3y ago> It has an energy density of about 11.3 kilowatt-hours per liter—better than gasoline. How about per gram?
- aredox 3y agoSometimes volume is more important than mass (e.g. on a ship).
- mjan22640 3y agoFlywheel energy storage
- lloydatkinson 3y agoSo it’s gone from burning non-renewable sources like gas and oil to burning… iron. This feels like a poor stop-gap that will turn into a long term solution one day instead of focussing on nuclear fusion/fission, solar, wind, beaming energy from space, etc. I had to lookup a German word for this: Weltschmerz. > Weltschmerz literally means 'world pain' and refers to a sense of world-weariness.
- rbanffy 3y agoIf I remember correctly, the process of recycling iron oxide into iron involves carbon monoxide and results in carbon dioxide, so, I’m not sure this would be as carbon neutral as they claim. There are other ways of course, but this is only for storage and recycling uses a lot of energy.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoIron oxide contains no carbon. So if there is any carbon monoxide forming that would have to come from somewhere else. Like the co2 in the atmosphere.
- vinnyvichy 3y agoNope, almost all of it comes from coal ("coke"). Well, unless you believe in the fossil theory of fuel. See any textbook on the Bessemer process or iron decarburization
- rbanffy 3y agoI’m talking about turning the iron oxide back into iron that can be burned. That usually uses carbon monoxide (mixed with hydrogen) to capture the oxygen atoms out of the iron oxide.
- treadmill 3y ago> you could use renewable electricity to produce iron Is there a known process to do this? At the moment most iron production is using coal. Edit: Also, what about nitrogen oxides? Almost any combustion with air produces them to some degree and they are harmful pollutants. The article never mentions them.
- user6723 3y agoI have yet to see something as well balanced as this hydrogen based flame https://aureon.ca/science https://aureon.ca/science
- gcoakes 3y agoSo, they rewrote energy production using rust?
- TrapLord_Rhodo 3y agoIt seems like the actual value add here is the long-term storage, Why not use aluminum? Lithium (Li): 3,860,000 joules/kg Aluminum (Al): 31,500,000 joules/kg Copper (Cu): 13,100,000 joules/kg Iron (Fe): 20,000,000 joules/kg Nickel (Ni): 9,800,000 joules/kg Titanium (Ti): 10,500,000 joules/kg Zinc (Zn): 3,700,000 joules/kg Lead (Pb): 2,040,000 joules/kg Silver (Ag): 10,490,000 joules/kg Gold (Au): 9,700,000 joules/kg It has the highest density per joules/kg.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 3y ago>"If these problems can be overcome, you could use renewable electricity to produce iron, store it as long as necessary, transport it there and then burn it for power when needed, says Bergthorson. “Places that have excess energy could make iron, and others can buy it. This way, you could commodify renewable energy so it can be globally distributed without the need for transmission lines. Metals can solve a big problem in the renewable energy transition: long-duration energy storage.”" first off.... WTF? Transporting iron is cheaper than transmission lines? I call BS.