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'Green steel': Swedish company ships first batch made without using coal:
The world's first customer delivery of "green steel" produced without using coal is taking place in Sweden, according to its manufacturer.
The Swedish venture Hybrit said it was delivering the steel to truck-maker Volvo AB as a trial run before full commercial production in 2026. Volvo has said it will start production in 2021 of prototype vehicles and components from the green steel.
Steel production using coal accounts for around 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Hybrit started test operations at its pilot plant for green free steel in Lulea, northern Sweden, a year ago. It aims to replace coking coal, traditionally needed for ore-based steel making, with renewable electricity and hydrogen. Hydrogen is a key part of the EU's plan to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Friday August 20 2021, @03:01PM (1 child)
WRT #2 Spathic/siderite iron ores come with their own carbon "for free" being iron carbonates. They are annoying to mine and not entirely compatible with existing steel processes so they get ignored. They're generally pretty low phosphorus, like zero P. Like many things there's an ideal level of P and too much or too little makes shit steel. Anyway maybe the "big picture long term" effect of greenwashed steel might be more interest in mining Spathic iron ore.
Usually your smelting stage has some limestone tossed in. Limestone being calcium carbonate. Generally the limestone gets baked into lime blowing the carbon dioxide off as a waste gas, but I suppose in theory you could recycle the co2 into the steel as a C source. I'm sure "your typical iron ore" is shitty enough to require more than a couple percent of limestone flux. The baked lime eats silicon dioxide "aka generic sand contaminant" and turns into glassy calcium silicate liquid thats easily separated off (like layer of oil and water, but white hot steel and liquid glass). Interestingly that silicate waste makes an interesting asbestos replacement AND anti-caking agent in your table salt... Just like P or any other alloying atom, a little Si makes awesomely better castings, but you can't have like 10% Si steel so sometimes you need the limestone...
Thats chemistry for you, start talking about greenwashing steel and next thing you know talking about table salt. But TLDR in summary there's no lack of carbon atoms floating around a steel mill I'm sure they'll find a source even with a coke-less process.
You talk to old timers or people who read old books LOL and they think average iron concentration in ore is still like 50% in the USA. Heck I remember doing quantitative analysis in chemistry class on ores like that in the 90s. But the US is running out of the good stuff and the average iron content is like 15% now since the turn of the century. Of course there's this power law thing much like coal, where theres like 1 unit of the best stuff, 10 units of crappier stuff, and 1000 units of "you gotta be kidding me but technically we can melt it..." stuff. So we're not running out of iron ore any time soon, but we are completely done with the high grade stuff. Supposedly theres like one mine left in south america thats still producing iron ore over 70% iron content but that sounds BS to me. The decline of quality iron ore is something people VERY carefully avoid discussing in mass media WRT the collapse of the US steel industry around the 70s. Questioning that might result in asking questions about hubberts peak and we can't have free thinking like that in the USA. Now everyone wear a kippah mask and watch the singing show and the sportsball show on the TV and don't ask no questions about nothing just vote "D" every time (or they'll throw out your ballot before counting it)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @11:43PM
I always enjoy reading when your write about your field.
However, I wasn't certain which questions I was supposed to ask about Hubbert's peak.