Hi Rosie, I think you did a great job explaining a totally new ironmaking process for steelmaking in a more sustainable way. It was a pleasure having you over in our facilities at Boston Metal.
It was a great opportunity to visit you guys! Thanks for being so generous with your time and I look forward to following your progress over coming years.
I love your videos Rosie. With so many sceptical opinions on clean energy around we need your excellent communication skills to understand all the pros and cons on this complex subject. With thanks. Pete.
oh hell yeah. i love tours of all these newer steel processes. Everything from arc furnace mini-mills to cutting edge electrochemical processes. atm what has been driving me crazy about the discourse is we still have people pushing the idea that we aren't able to decarbonize steel right now if we had the will but in truth we have multiple methods already worked out for steel and really it's concrete where there are serious roadblocks.
Concrete is high on my list of video topics I need to cover! Preferably by doing a tour somewhere (because I also enjoy the tours!) But I haven't found a chance to tour a good concrete project yet. I do have one coming up on mineral carbonation which is a tech that allows a reduction in emissions from concrete.
@@EngineeringwithRosie For a tour covering concrete please contact the VUB (Free University of Brussels) they have done a very short video on their research (ua-cam.com/video/J-rQtHoVtsE/v-deo.html ) that I truly believe deserves more attention
I have 40 years supervisory experience in the steel industry and we are not even near ready to go carbon free. I wonder what happens when there is not enough energy to charge electric cars let alone a steel mill. We are going to ruin the steel industry if not the entire economy of the US. Instead of industry making changes, politicians are mandating this garbage in which we will be paying even more for energy than we are presently. Making steel with hydrogen or Green Hydrogen in large quantities is impossible now because we don't have the technology to do it economically but I know some wise guy will dispute what I am saying but in the future I will be proven right. The change is too fast and too drastic and will cause the loss of good middle class jobs in the name of the myth, climate change.
@@richardallison8745 clearly the US economy is more important than the survival of humankind past our grandchildren's generation. And even more important are "good middle class jobs". Right, gotcha! Even if you hadn't named your country is have known where you're from.
Fantastic video. I never studied engineering but the difficulties in scaling things up and overcoming those problems is the most interesting aspect to me.
Thanks Christopher! I was so excited to do this tour, so I'm glad the video captured that 😊 Project tours are my favourite kind of video to make, though they take more effort. I have a few more cool ones coming up in the next few months.
Fascinating stuff! Between this and some of the direct magnesium oxide electrolysis research done at Boston University, Massachusetts is really putting in the work on green metal refinery.
I hope they are successful at making this economic. Making steel and concrete that are green is vital to quickly displace fossil fuels and industrial processes that produce large amounts of CO2. The electrification of mining equipment along with these innovative green processes could give us a chance of avoiding the worst case climate change path we are on now. Thanks for an informative video.
Love your videos & analysis. Green Steel gets a lot of hype because it seems easy to understand and easily accessible. It would be really cool to see an evaluation of the 1on1 replacement of SMR technology in Refineries since refinery consumption makes up 25% of the the current world wide demand of H2.
An interesting steel making process, and very similar to a good'ol Aluminum smelting arc furnace which consumes MASSIVE amounts of electrical power. ie. typically needs to be located close to a electrical power generation station. Interestingly, there is a way to do this same work without the need for the arc furnace and electricity.
I’m interested to see it makes Oxygen and not CO2, like the Al Hall process. The anode is very central to this and I’m curious to see what it might be - perhaps some PGM ceramic.
Yes. Also I noticed, that they are already working on it for 10 years. And I certainly hope, that other things have started lots of years ago, which will now all come out of the bushes to help us fix this.
I believe their processes are already used in making Titanium cheaper. And prof. Sadoway has some other related tech in the works, for liquid metal batteries, also based on redox and similar electrode material research. Hopefully it all works, and makes Steel making cleaner, less CO2 emissions and easier to do.
Lots of people are commenting about whether this is really a steel making process, or just iron. And it's true that we really only talked about the iron part here in this video (partly because I made a different video on steelmaking recently and didn't want to double up on the same content: ua-cam.com/video/jWD2nI5RhpI/v-deo.html ). Here's more on the iron/steel issue for those who are interested: "Iron and steel are intricately linked. There is no steel without iron. Boston Metal’s technology relates to primary steel production. The liquid iron that is tapped from our MOE cells integrates directly to the ladle metallurgy step in steelmaking where carbon would be added, along with other elements depending on end-product specifications. The iron making phase of primary steel production is responsible for the bulk of CO2 emissions related to steelmaking. Our process eliminates the carbon-intensive steps of primary steelmaking - coke production, iron ore processing, blast furnace, basic oxygen furnace. " (quote from Boston Metal)
Same thought here, I wondered about voltage and as you say power requirement, I dare say it must be massive. Also wondering what could supply a constant 600,000 amps on the larger version, is this where the Nuclear Modular Reactor finds its home?
I am very curious what the "inert anode" could be. At temps >1500°C, kA currents and potentials of the different iron oxides in an oxygen rich atmosphere... And how it fares against the hydrogen based conventional process.
I hadn't realised DRI/EAF could only be used on such a small fraction of ores. No-one mentioned that in the various sources I have watched/read about that development. OK, those are Boston Metals promo slides, so maybe it's not quite that bad really, but this seems to be a very significant caveat when talking about decarbonising steel production.
These processes are only viable when electricity is cheap. As a comparison the Alcan plants were built in Scotland, where massive amounts of Hydro power could be had cheaply. How many megawatts are required? What is the electrode cost? Capital costs of actually building these reactors is negligible, compared to the electrical energy and electrode costs required
A key component of this process, as shown, is gravity. To refine metals in zero G we will almost certainly need to use electricity. I wonder how we will approach the refining in zero G? Could the cell shown be spun like a centrifuge perhaps?
@@topduk It's a chemical that we are dumping into the atmosphere at a rate of about 40 billion tons a year. This wrecks the climate, costing us trillions of dollars. That's enough damage to call it a "pollutant" as far as I'm concerned.
Another great video, I really enjoy your way of delving into these ideas, providing enough information and context without leaving us non-engineers in the dust. OTOH, you were less than 70 miles away and you didn't call to say hi? 😅 Oh well, I tend to buy cheap lunches anyway, you're probably better off.
Ha ha, it seems lots of my viewers are in the Boston area. Which I guess makes sense, there is soooo much clean energy tech being developed in the area. I was unfortunately just recovered from Covid when I made this video (had to delay by a week before I could even get into the US!), and still super tired. So I wasn't able to see anything except my hotel room and Boston Metal. I definitely need to go back and take a look at some of the other stuff going on there.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Maybe you could do a general video on the technology being developed in the Boston area ? Or in any other scientific/engineering precinct for that matter ? It seems there's plenty going on. I really enjoy how your videos explain the reality , or not , of some of these technologies and how soon we might expect to see them commercially available.
I appreciate they are showing EAF continuing - obviously, the EAF technology is essential in sustaining a circular economy for steel. Interesting to hear this process can possibly tolerate lower grade iron ore - including silicon and other dilution? It would be good to talk about how the BOF, EAF and Boston metals products compare in GWP/kg. There are obvious horizontal issues is obviously the 600KA, which as discussed is similar to the ridiculously intensive Aluminum smelting process- aka solid electricity! Build it adjacent to hydro as we’ve seen ‘hydro’ the Aluminum smelting company in Norway achieve to provide v low GWP Aluminum. Lastly, the term green steel, zero carbon steel etc. all great buzz words but the ESG community is soo confused about all this…. We need clearer messaging to help folks in the industry
Really interested to get Rosie's take on Electra in Boulder USA who are developing a low temp electrolysis method of producing iron from low grade iron ore.
It seems to be that Sadoway has a knack for getting grants and startup funding for "green" tech that ends up fizzling. They've had a DECADE to reproduce what bauxite refining already does, and they haven't even hit production-like machinery? What?? Sadoway is the same professor that has been talking about his "molten metal" battery that hasn't gone anywhere, and now we see plans for a "commercial" design making 100s of kg a day? That isn't even a drop in the ocean compared to the 88 million metric tons of just steel produced annually in the US alone.Even if these units produce 500kg, we'd need over half a million of them operating 24x7 to meet just the US production. And the US is third in steel manufacturing.
It takes a long time to optimize processes like this. The cells will get larger, and they can be ganged as in an aluminum smelter. Sadoway's liquid metal battery IS going somewhere, last I heard.
Ok, that's pretty fucking cool. Biggest issue I see is getting enough electrical power at wanted prices. Especially as datacentres and aluminium smelters are also wanting the exact same thing too.
Also factor in charging all of the new electric cars and phasing in more electric appliances to replace natural gas appliances. We will be forced to build (at great cost) more nuclear power plants.
Thankyou, we have to get rid of the Bessemer process. This is an important technique in addition to electric arc furnace. Also for steel, hydrogen reduction being pursued by Sweden and Germany looks promising. Next we need to solve CO2 problem of cement manufacture, then fertilizer, chemicals, synthetic fuel, the list goes on . .. and on.
Knowledge of materials grew, scientific understanding advanced, and new smelting processes were discovered, The Bessemer Process became obsolete. The method stopped being used in the US completely in 1968. Electric air furnaces and other more technical oxygen steelmaking processes took its place.21 Oct 2021
Is this process making steel directly or producing iron for making steel? Would be nice to differentiate this process from other electric arc furnace processes.
People tend to get this wrong but in reality what we think of as steel is of a medium carbon content, cast iron has more steel and wrought iron has less. It's not that this is pure elemental iron and burning coal introduces carbon to it, it's more that this pig iron has a ton of carbon in it and we need to pump oxygen through it to get rid of some in order to make it into steel.
This is an iron making process and if they could scale it upto 30,000 Tonnes per day, they might be able commercialise. Steel making would occur in the next part of the process. Anyway, good luck to this folks with their endeavours.
The "iron" that comes out of a blast furnace typically contains about 4% Carbon, as well as other impurities which have to be removed in the steel-making process. This is because the iron was reduced with carbon, and so there is a huge excess of it which goes into solution in the iron. In the electrolytic process, the C level should be quite low, as no carbon is involved. Probably likewise for such impurities ans S and P.
And is there a way to restore that energy used in the process by cooling it down to a heat exchanger or something which could be used for other applications like heating homes
Well, another post disappeared! I've signed in using a different Google account. The slide in the video saying that iron making using hydrogen needs high grade ore, in limited supply, is correct. Unfortunately over 70% of steel making equipment needs replacing by 2030, and electrolysis in quantity won't be ready by then. I omit the links confirming this in case it is some weird spam filter chucking out any posts with links ,search for spglobal's analysis. But we seem to be in a bit of a fix for decarbonising steel production.
Not all comments with links get deleted, but perhaps that is the reason as I can see this comment but couldn't see the others. Did you see the earlier video I did on steel where my guest and I talked about the different options for green steel? He basically split things into two, where up to 2030 it would be about reducing emissions in mostly existing equipment and then after would be about moving to zero emissions techs. ua-cam.com/video/jWD2nI5RhpI/v-deo.html
@@EngineeringwithRosie Yep, interesting video. I would comment more, but it seems a bit difficult here, and I am not a fan of Patreon's sweeping derogations of privacy, so there are several groups I would like to join, and don't mind paying, but don't fancy their conditions. More on the point, I did post on your interview with Dr Martin on the hassles of piping hydrogen, mainly due to its lower energy by volume. The post disappeared, but I thought my namesake missed the point, as if we are to hit the targets for GW, there is no way the NG pipelines will have to transport as much energy in, say, the UK or Germany as they currently do. Better insulation of homes, heat pumps, solar with cooling and use of their heat as in your video visit, and so on and on, all mean that the 30% or so that the converted NG pipelines would need to carry as hydrogen is a pretty good fit. Of course, 'and another thing' arguments may be made, but the notion that the lower capacity of the NG network converted to carry hydrogen is a showstopper simply makes no sense. Naturally aside from the costs of conversion, maintaining a network to carry less energy is more expensive per KWh, but that is another argument.
That's how you get the clicks apparently! Though I personally don't notice too much difference in video popularity for the ones with better or more click bait titles. Choosing thumbnails and titles is my least favourite part of YouTubing.
Can you please help me with my math on this? A '600kA' electrolysis cell is supposed to permit production of 1.5 million tons per year of steel. For round numbers I am assuming metric tons, so this means 1.5 x 10^9 kg of steel per year or simplifying that this is pure iron, 26.9 x 10^9 moles of per year. This gives me 852 moles per second of iron being produced. The oxidation number of iron in Fe2O3 is +3, so to reduce 852 moles you need 2.5 x 10^3 Faraday of electrons. 1 Faraday is 96x10^3 amp seconds. So with perfect coulombic efficiency, and if I have my maths correct, I'd expect one would need 246 MA to reach this production level. Is it possible that a 600kA cell will only produce 1.5 million _pounds_ per year of steel? Thanks for making these videos, and thanks for checking my math! -Jon
How tolerant is this system to power outages? AFAIK, a power outage in an aluminum smelter can require weeks or months to restore cells to functioning. Can the rate of production be scaled down, to provide a variable load to the grid?
It is a little surprising that they could not take more from the similar process used to produce Aluminium. At least as stated they can use power delivery technology from the aluminium side to speed up development to industrial scale. It would be interesting to know if they had any cost estimates for the industrial process?
Iron ore has a higher melting point than bauxite. Aluminium production does release some CO2 as coke is used as a reducing agent. It's there to "grab" the oxygen so it doesn't recombine with the aluminium.
Actually, the MOE process is simpler. To produce aluminium you take bauxite and refine this to almost pure aluminium oxide (alumina). The electrolysis process then converts alumina to aluminium. Using MOE, iron ore is directly used in the electrolysis process to make pure iron. A full industrial unit operation is thus skipped.
First I want to say I appreciate the way of development - big laboratory instead of intensive powerpointing. I have questions left: - what is the difference to the Arc processes? - what kind of quality is the product - you were already talking about "steel"?
First of all the difference is the graphite electrodes in the common arc furnace, graphite would emit CO2 in this application. Dipping the electrodes in highly oxidised slag would erode them very fast. Then the slags and how this is managed and the arc furnace does not have a controlled atmosphere. The arc furnace is also tilted when tapping, not suitable for a continuous process, So just about everything. Arc furnaces can however handle sponge iron quite well. The current in the arc furnace is 3 phase AC and generally only about 50 kA.
The MOE process is an electrochemical process where electrons travel through molten slag. They meet FeO and reduce this to Fe and O2. There is no arc involved. Because the anodes are made from special alloys there is no CO2 formed and only pure O2 gas. MOE iron is pure iron without carbon. In the phase diagram, it then is called "steel" but in reality you can't call it steel because real steel has other metals added to it to make it the right grade. This explains why there is often confusion between the term iron and steel in the case of MOE iron.
One question is what type of ores does this process work on? From statements made in Calix’s ZESTY press release it sounded like this process would not be applicable to the major Australian reserves? Would be good to follow up with comparisons to ZESTY and the SSAB HYBRIT
A question that puzzles me: is this method more energy efficient than steelmaking via direct hydrogen reduction + electric arc furnace? I could not find clear, concise information about that in the net so far.
So there are multiple ways to produce steel without using coal? I need to rewatch your older videos. I was, still are confused why a specific new method is being developed in New Zealand too for "green" steel. As I understand there are scaled semi-commercial green steel plants in Europe and North America, can't we just copy those?
Yep there are several ways. This is the video where we discuss the different ways and pros and cons. ua-cam.com/video/jWD2nI5RhpI/v-deo.html I didn't know there was an NZ tech in development, I'll have to look it up.
@@EngineeringwithRosie In New Zealand, the steelmaking process is based on iron sands as the raw material. This is fairly unique and they currently use submerged arc furnaces using carbon electrodes. The Uni is seeking to use a hydrogen route while reducing iron sand.
So I am a bit confused. I understand that this is a great CO2-free way of making iron, and that's great! But from what I remember learning in school is that to make steel you need carbon mixed in in the final crystal structure with the iron. So that they can make iron with this process I understand, but it seems impossible to make steel using it?
I love your videos Rosie. However I noticed that you did not talk about price. Today china produce 70% of all steel in the world and growing fast. Europe is shutting down many of our steel mills now, because they cannot compete because Europe fucked up BIG time with our energy politics. I heard that green steel from H2 is 5 - 8 times more expensive than black steel. Thus if this is still the case, we can be absolutely sure that 99.9% of all steel will still be black steel. This is so simple: If you do not have steel and cement and aluminium and electricity, then you cannot build factories, thus your country cannot make products and eventually your economy will fail. European politicians and journalists will manage to "kill" europe long before CO2 ever can. We will have a big crisis and then a big war.
Democratic and "green" countries will fail. Communist and fascist "non-green" countries will thrive. And we all know what the outcome of this will be...
That doesn't reduce iron, it is a simple melting process. Most small foundries have got rid of their blast furnaces and melt via induction. A local foundry has two 700Kg induction furnaces. Presently one is shut down due to the cost of electricity. If it keeps going, they will shut up shop altogether
Like Robin said, you cannot make iron just by heating ore. This is an electrochemical process that uses electrical energy to break down the ore. Traditionally, energy from coke is used.
I think their process is similar the Cambridge Farthing Process that was invented in Cambridge UK some 25 years ago. It uses Calcium Oxide as a salt and dissolves the ore in it then electrolysis will reduce the Fe Ox to iron on the electrode and releases O2 on the other. I always thought this would be an eccellent process for metallurgy on the Moon or Mars, as it also produces large qontities of Oxygen that is needed for the life support systems. However the power hunger of this process is ginormous. So it will need a nuclear plant next door to produce the required power. Otherwise, it will be a bit of an inefficient process if fossile fuels are used for the power generation. But it is too to see that this type of process is finally coming through. And with Russia out of the picture for Titanium for a while, it may also need to be used for that.
Helmut Zollner, the original MOE process is patented by Dr. Sadoway and Dr. Allanore. It has been deeply scrutinized so it is a unique process. From an energy point of view, the objective is to make steel using the MOE process with an amount of energy lesser or equal to conventional steelmaking processes like a blast furnace. The difference is that MOE is 100% electrical energy while standard technology is a combination of electrical energy and chemical energy from coal (coke). As long as we can be more efficient, then we get ahead. Yes, the power generation industry needs to follow suit to keep up with the development of decarbonization tools like MOE that electrify conventional processes. The MOE process is also very efficient for the production of ferro-alloys.
@@MyStevieB I don't doubt that the patents are water tight. The Cambridge process was just the first metallurgical process that did not rely on chemical Energy and in laymens terms electrolyzed the melt and removed oxygen gas from an ore. The paper at the time stated that other metal. So this new process goes in the same direction. I see the big potential in these process not only the environmental benefit for the civilization Herron earth, but also for thevspave settlement efforts. It is obviously much more economic to produce building materials and atmosphere from in-situ resources. And these electric processes are perfect for that. The old chemical processes were only viable because electricity was produced from fossile fuels, so using the coal directly in the process made it more efficient. With electric energy from other sources the chemical process is less useful. Over all I am very excited to see these new processes coming online. Will make the whole industry a lot cleaner. Hoeever, steel productiin is such a cut-throat busibess, any new process will struggle to gain traction, if the carbon usage is not factored into the pricing. So, here on Earth it is going to be a political decision to adopt these processes.
Having done additional research, I had misunderstood the process. Iron ore can be smelted in an arc furnace by continually injecting carbon monoxide or other reducing agents along with the charge. For this they are proposing doing to iron ore what is already being done with aluminium ore. So instead of burning the coal to melt and reduce the ore, you are now burning the coal to generate the electricity to power the electrolysis. How can this possibly be economically competitive when the main producers of iron from iron ore in the world are not handicapped by emissions regulations?
Coal is rapidly being removed from the generation mix in many developed countries. Making clean steel obviously requires clean electricity. This is a thing that already exists. We know how to do it.
There is a lot of iron oxide on Mars - it's the reason why it's red. Would a process like this make sense in that setting, given the need not only for structural steel but also oxygen? It probably wouldn't make sense without a pretty serious nuclear powerplant, but might there be a way to directly use the heat from the fission reaction to melt the ore? Maybe a stream of incoming ore powder could even be a coolant for the reactor?
I guess the implication is that it's very similar to aluminium refining. So so economics will be similar to Alumina to aluminium. One might wonder about 'cheap electricity' suppliers to make it work.
@6:40 You've mentioned the current many times. You haven't mentioned the voltage even once. There's no indication of the energy that this process uses to produce the resulting iron. How is a person supposed to compare these result to something like an arc furnace?
Since you have commented several times I can tell you are very interested in this. The answer to your question here above is that when companies meet with us to learn all details, they all sign secrecy agreements. Most information is kept confidential and the voltages are one aspect of this. When they do get the information, they are in a position to make evaluations and comparisons.
Though more abundant than Bauxite for making Aluminum, electrolyzing Iron ore will make it as expensive. 6 times the price? Not a complaint, but it will change how much steel we use in construction and other places.
Did they say what the electrodes were made of, or how they're made? The paper linked just says "chromium alloys", which is kinda vague. It would have to be a pretty interesting material to not corrode, erode, melt, warp, contaminate the steel, or electrolytically deposit at ~1500C in a bath of molten steel and superheated oxygen flue gas while being electrically charged with hundreds of kiloamps...
A quick Google search suggests that chromium is unstable in oxygen above 900 C (and iron at a way lower temperature). This suggests to me that chromium alloys cannot be inert at 1500 C. Actually, since iron melts at 1538 C, the bath temperature must be even higher. Earlier, I suggested that there was something fishy about Boston Metal's claims. I'm now doubling down on that comment.
@@orumadayan1086 Search for the patent by Don Sadoway and Antoine Allanore. Read it thoroughly because then you will understand its exact principles and how this alloy can be used under the conditions.
@@MyStevieB The patent was tough to understand, but I found two papers. One says that the furnace was purged with helium and the other says argon. Even then, the pictures of the anode show a lot of corrosion after 250 minutes. Are you planning to contain a steel plant under argon or helium? Either way, you have a big problem.
Sounds quite possible , the possible week point might be the electrodes. 600 A is quite a lot and it also need to go somewhere ( through the bottom) might not be easy. The attempts to make arcfurnaces DC current did not go well. But ok, I am curious. The competition is using Hydrogen as the swedes try, not the old blast furnaces or carbon capture, but that is expensive.
If the Swedes use hydrogen to make steel, they will go out of business because the cost of hydrogen is not even competitive to natural gas. Carbon capture also adds to the cost of steel. Green steel will put lots of companies and jobs out of work.
@@richardallison8745 the Swedish system is intended to use on site solar electricity to make the H2. That means that by the time they get there the cost of H2 on the open market is less relevant. Also, if other industries like aviation retool to hydrogen or ammonia then the cost of H2 on the market will initially rise due to demand but then plummet as H2 production ramps up.
MOE is an electrolysis process similar to aluminium smelting. The best aluminium smelters run at 500,000 amps. The highest ones run at about 600,000 amps. This is very different from arc furnaces.
@@MyStevieB Very different. Electrolysis in aluminum does not arc but uses huge amounts of electricity. That is why there are almost no primary aluminum production in America because we don't have any hydroelectric dams that are dedicated to making aluminum. Alcoa sold all their primary production in the Tennessee if not the entire US.
@@richardallison8745 Try to look into the future. We need to electrify processes that use carbon. Like many other industries, the power industry will have to reinvent itself by going green and by having to significantly increase its capacities too. Tackling climate change requires some bold thinking and actions. Furthermore, please look again at Alcoa - they are a key partner in Elysis, the inert anode developer for aluminium smelting.
That's great news. I recently was wondering if steel could be produced electrically. The slides were a little small on my phone, so the only other input besides the ore is oxygen?
The oxygen is *removed* from the ore, not added. Electric current is what's added, though the actual commercial process is more complicated than just sticking electrodes in a pile of iron ore. If you're on your phone and want more details why don't you try the Boston Metal website, they've got some good diagrams on there and with the static images you can zoom in. It's also not the only way to electrically make steel. I made a more general video on zero emissions steel a few months back so check that out if you want to know more.
At some level of simplification this is like the way Aluminium is smelted: electrical energy to remove the oxygen from the metal oxides in each case. The energy is needed to replace the energy that was released when the oxides formed a billion years ago. The details differ between iron and aluminium, of course, but as this video pointed out the issues around the electrical engineering (rather than the electrolysis cells) have already been solved by the Aluminium smelters. They know how to scale up the wiring. That gives them a useful leg up.
But that process doesn't make steel; it makes pure iron. I'm not a metallurgist, so is there an efficient process for turning metallic iron into steel?
The only benefit that I can see from the abstract of the research paper is that the rate of consumption of the electrodes is greatly reduced compared to a normal arc furnace.
@Kargoneth, the Boston Metal process uses special alloys for anodes and not (carbon) electrodes. This is the core of why this process makes iron without CO2. The other product is oxygen gas.
Thank you for this video, it was very interesting, and I am looking forward to more on this! For instance, is there any public estimate of the cost per Kg of this technology with respect to traditional ones? What are the constraints that bind firms to use one 200 kA cell, instead of two 100 kA ones? The last one might be a bit naive, but I have no engineering background.
From what I know, the cost per kg will be dominated by the cost of electricity plus the cost of the cell amortized over its expected lifetime. As for cell size, I'm guessing it is a combination of labour efficiency and thermal efficiency. To the former: it takes a lot less work to tap one big cell than it does to tap many little cells. To the latter: the larger the cell, the less electricity will be lost out of the cell as heat. The iron output of the cell is a function of its volume, its heat loss is a function of its surface area. This is why the really small experimental cells had to be heated externally. Volume cubes, surface area squares, so the larger the cell is the more energy efficient it will be.
@@JonMartinYXD That was a great, yet very easy explanation, thank you! As for the cost, I agree on the long run drivers, but would still be cool to know where we stand now, that is the estimate of current €/Kg and the estimate of the "switch price" of electricity with respect to conventional steel.
my engineering concerns: - iron ore is far from pure iron oxide, you're gonna deal with sulphur, phosphorus and a whole bunch of other impurities - immense electricity consumption - steel prices will jump to aluminum level. Do you really want it?
I mean this is the REAL cost of iron. The only reason it doesn’t cost more is that we’re all effectively subsidising it by ignoring the environmental cost - which we all pay sooner or later through environmental disaster, illness, etc The good news is that electricity is source agnostic. You can power it with wind, solar, hydro etc. Or nuclear! So the cost should only decrease over time
if this process is carbon free, then the iron ore has to have no carbon itself? or somehow the carbon doesn't combust and you adjust the carbon content by regulating the amount of siderite and lemonite? are there limitations on the kinds of ore you can put in?
@@incognitotorpedo42 actually that depends on the iron ore, and you always have to be careful, tech companies, particularly startups bullshit a lot and i mean A LOT, i have experience, believe me, and back to the carbon, for example siderite's formula is FeCO3, so there is definitely carbon, and you just cant magically disappear it, it will recombine to something else, like for example co2, thats why im at the very least curious about the claims
I am confused. Is the process smelting iron or producing steel. Constant references are made to iron in the video. How many Kwh/Tonne of product?, this is the important metric at the end of the day.
We did talk primarily about iron as that's the main part, with the most emissions normally. You can add carbon etc to the molten metal to get steel in the single process.
Just to be that guy n' all, but the phrase: "Swapping electricity for coal in steelmaking ", means to get rid of electricity and use coal instead. While I don't particularly think it's very important, you might want to swap "coal" and "electricity" around in the title for consistency. At any rate, great video!
Ha, I had it the other way and then thought it sounded like the opposite and swapped it at the last second 🙂 I'm still not 100% sure about the title in general, got any different suggestions that are catchy yet accurate?
Honestly I ain't too good atcoming up with catchy titles, more of a dull straight forward type of person, but honestly I think it'd be entirely fine if just swapped around. It's informative and accurate, though you might want to watch Veritasiums video on how to do titles and thumbnails (about the neccesity of clickbait) if you havn't it might give somw better ideas than what I can do. Ps. please do apologise spelling errors, I despise smartphone touchpads for writing, but it's what I have at the moment.
What is the range of carbon content in the steel that this process can produce? Can this process produce steel grades with normal concentrations of trace materials? Can this process produce steel varieties chemically superior (in some way) to the traditional process?
mjmeans, because we don't use carbon in the production process, the iron produced with the MOE process is free of carbon. In a separate process step after the iron is tapped, steelmakers add other metals to convert the iron into steel. It then has the exact same properties as standard steel.
@@MyStevieB Thank you very much. That explains why I was confused. The title of the video suggests that the new process for making steel, when it actually makes elemental iron, or iron oxide. When adding the additional processes needed to create steel from the elemental iron or iron oxide the new process produces is considered, is net CO2 produced more of less CO2 than the old process end to end? I'm wondering if the CO2 burden (or budget) is just being shifted to a later stage of steel production or if there is a net increase or decrease; and whether this new process is better utilized, at least initially, for elemental iron uses other than for steel production.
@@mjmeans7983 No, once you produce the iron carbon-free that benefit is upheld further down the processes. In the steps where steel products are made (like the rolling mill), all parameters remain the same. However, you don't need a pelletizing plant or a coke-making plant. The avoidance of this has other considerable environmental benefits too.
@@MyStevieB Thank you very much for that explanation. I hope the technology can ultimately grow to be cost competitive without the need for government intervention.
You're saying this is carbon-free; but how is the needed energy generated? Are we just switching carbon emissions from the smelter to the power plant? What is in the slag? He said it is recycled: into what? How does the cost/kg compare to the present method, specifically? "Costing" is mentioned but just how much more is this? I'm not getting excited yet.
This is 'he'. The process is 100% carbon free because it uses electricity as the reduction agent. Scope 2 emissions can be carbon-free too if the method of power generation is also CO2 free. This is where we are going in the future. The slag is considered standard and used in cement plants like BF slag is today. I hope you are getting a little more excited now.
When you say the temperature goes up to 1600 do you mean 1600F or 1600C? I think it is 1600C which is 2912F. Are they using plasma torches to get to that temperature? They should look at what Ovako Steel in Sweden did with plasma torches to produce DRI. i know that ADL back in the day looked at something like this.
I assume that the electricity to power this can come from solar rather than coal. If that's the case, why are we not doing this in Australia where there is an abundance of sunlight close to where there is an abundance of iron ore? We could be selling iron rather than iron ore.
@@w0ttheh3ll I think we used to until China worked out how to do it cheaper because their labour and safety and pollution laws were less strict than ours. Now we just send iron ore :(
Hi Rosie, I think you did a great job explaining a totally new ironmaking process for steelmaking in a more sustainable way. It was a pleasure having you over in our facilities at Boston Metal.
It was a great opportunity to visit you guys! Thanks for being so generous with your time and I look forward to following your progress over coming years.
I love your videos Rosie. With so many sceptical opinions on clean energy around we need your excellent communication skills to understand all the pros and cons on this complex subject. With thanks. Pete.
Thanks Peter! That's nice of you to say. I do try to balance my scepticism of certain green techs with exciting projects with real potential 🙂
oh hell yeah. i love tours of all these newer steel processes. Everything from arc furnace mini-mills to cutting edge electrochemical processes. atm what has been driving me crazy about the discourse is we still have people pushing the idea that we aren't able to decarbonize steel right now if we had the will but in truth we have multiple methods already worked out for steel and really it's concrete where there are serious roadblocks.
Concrete is high on my list of video topics I need to cover! Preferably by doing a tour somewhere (because I also enjoy the tours!) But I haven't found a chance to tour a good concrete project yet. I do have one coming up on mineral carbonation which is a tech that allows a reduction in emissions from concrete.
Just a little specification. This process do not produce steel. It produce iron that could be the source for making steel, but it is not steel.
@@EngineeringwithRosie For a tour covering concrete please contact the VUB (Free University of Brussels) they have done a very short video on their research (ua-cam.com/video/J-rQtHoVtsE/v-deo.html ) that I truly believe deserves more attention
I have 40 years supervisory experience in the steel industry and we are not even near ready to go carbon free. I wonder what happens when there is not enough energy to charge electric cars let alone a steel mill. We are going to ruin the steel industry if not the entire economy of the US. Instead of industry making changes, politicians are mandating this garbage in which we will be paying even more for energy than we are presently. Making steel with hydrogen or Green Hydrogen in large quantities is impossible now because we don't have the technology to do it economically but I know some wise guy will dispute what I am saying but in the future I will be proven right. The change is too fast and too drastic and will cause the loss of good middle class jobs in the name of the myth, climate change.
@@richardallison8745 clearly the US economy is more important than the survival of humankind past our grandchildren's generation. And even more important are "good middle class jobs".
Right, gotcha!
Even if you hadn't named your country is have known where you're from.
Fantastic video. I never studied engineering but the difficulties in scaling things up and overcoming those problems is the most interesting aspect to me.
You must be an engineer at heart then!
Well done Rosie. Good to see you out and about checking things out in person
You’re a kiddie diddler. I see it in your eyes. The eyes never lie.
Thanks for the tour!!! Great video, it's cool to see these site tours and explanations
Thanks Christopher! I was so excited to do this tour, so I'm glad the video captured that 😊 Project tours are my favourite kind of video to make, though they take more effort. I have a few more cool ones coming up in the next few months.
Fascinating stuff! Between this and some of the direct magnesium oxide electrolysis research done at Boston University, Massachusetts is really putting in the work on green metal refinery.
Look up Phoenix Tailings too for a different side of green refining, Massachusetts again!
Very cool to see the various sizes and real time operation of the reactors. Well done
I hope they are successful at making this economic. Making steel and concrete that are green is vital to quickly displace fossil fuels and industrial processes that produce large amounts of CO2. The electrification of mining equipment along with these innovative green processes could give us a chance of avoiding the worst case climate change path we are on now. Thanks for an informative video.
Lovely work Ms. Rosie
Love your videos & analysis. Green Steel gets a lot of hype because it seems easy to understand and easily accessible. It would be really cool to see an evaluation of the 1on1 replacement of SMR technology in Refineries since refinery consumption makes up 25% of the the current world wide demand of H2.
That's an interesting idea for a video.
Not to mention hydrogen embrittlement
This is how I will make all my iron from now on.
😂 I never make iron any other way!
An interesting steel making process, and very similar to a good'ol Aluminum smelting arc furnace which consumes MASSIVE amounts of electrical power. ie. typically needs to be located close to a electrical power generation station. Interestingly, there is a way to do this same work without the need for the arc furnace and electricity.
How do you reduce iron oxide without heat and electricity? By using hydrogen? I think electric reduction will be cheaper.
I’m interested to see it makes Oxygen and not CO2, like the Al Hall process. The anode is very central to this and I’m curious to see what it might be - perhaps some PGM ceramic.
Wonderful work! The practical aspects of development.
Great video Rosie! It's moderately heart warming to see that we can make progress!
Yes. Also I noticed, that they are already working on it for 10 years. And I certainly hope, that other things have started lots of years ago, which will now all come out of the bushes to help us fix this.
Great reporting, and just love to see so many women on the cutting edge of world-changing research!
I believe their processes are already used in making Titanium cheaper. And prof. Sadoway has some other related tech in the works, for liquid metal batteries, also based on redox and similar electrode material research.
Hopefully it all works, and makes Steel making cleaner, less CO2 emissions and easier to do.
Interesting video. They seem to be addressing the factors need to make this a viable production method.
Lots of people are commenting about whether this is really a steel making process, or just iron. And it's true that we really only talked about the iron part here in this video (partly because I made a different video on steelmaking recently and didn't want to double up on the same content: ua-cam.com/video/jWD2nI5RhpI/v-deo.html ). Here's more on the iron/steel issue for those who are interested:
"Iron and steel are intricately linked. There is no steel without iron.
Boston Metal’s technology relates to primary steel production. The liquid iron that is tapped from our MOE cells integrates directly to the ladle metallurgy step in steelmaking where carbon would be added, along with other elements depending on end-product specifications.
The iron making phase of primary steel production is responsible for the bulk of CO2 emissions related to steelmaking. Our process eliminates the carbon-intensive steps of primary steelmaking - coke production, iron ore processing, blast furnace, basic oxygen furnace. "
(quote from Boston Metal)
And thank you for not being an hour long on this one. :=)
Tha'ts a fantastic work. Many thanks for this videos.
love your videos. you're my favourite renewables youtuber.
Wow, thank you!
That woul pair perfectly with our clean hydro power jere in Québec, we already produce a major pprtion of aluminum in North America.
For me, this process was difficult to understand. However, I learned something new today. Thank you 😊
Great stuff! I remember reading about this technology for use on Mars.
Very good interview , extremely interesting, same prof that created the liquid metal battery
What power consumption per tonne of steel are they predicting?
It’s electric! Bogie wogie wogie! Very cool video
The references to DC current beg the question: what voltage are they using? This would clue us in to power demand.
Same thought here, I wondered about voltage and as you say power requirement, I dare say it must be massive. Also wondering what could supply a constant 600,000 amps on the larger version, is this where the Nuclear Modular Reactor finds its home?
I am very curious what the "inert anode" could be. At temps >1500°C, kA currents and potentials of the different iron oxides in an oxygen rich atmosphere...
And how it fares against the hydrogen based conventional process.
This is such great news but few comprehend. Thank you for all you do.
Excellent report--thank you Rosie!
I hadn't realised DRI/EAF could only be used on such a small fraction of ores. No-one mentioned that in the various sources I have watched/read about that development. OK, those are Boston Metals promo slides, so maybe it's not quite that bad really, but this seems to be a very significant caveat when talking about decarbonising steel production.
These processes are only viable when electricity is cheap. As a comparison the Alcan plants were built in Scotland, where massive amounts of Hydro power could be had cheaply. How many megawatts are required? What is the electrode cost? Capital costs of actually building these reactors is negligible, compared to the electrical energy and electrode costs required
This was great!
Now you need to do a video on cement. Steel and cement make up nearly 20% of CO2 emissions.
A key component of this process, as shown, is gravity. To refine metals in zero G we will almost certainly need to use electricity. I wonder how we will approach the refining in zero G? Could the cell shown be spun like a centrifuge perhaps?
Re: cost - if steel producers were paying for the environmental cost of their operations, this process would become economical in no time.
Yes true.
You’re so right
Except CO2 isn't a pollutant at all.
@@topduk It's a chemical that we are dumping into the atmosphere at a rate of about 40 billion tons a year. This wrecks the climate, costing us trillions of dollars. That's enough damage to call it a "pollutant" as far as I'm concerned.
Another great video, I really enjoy your way of delving into these ideas, providing enough information and context without leaving us non-engineers in the dust.
OTOH, you were less than 70 miles away and you didn't call to say hi? 😅 Oh well, I tend to buy cheap lunches anyway, you're probably better off.
Ha ha, it seems lots of my viewers are in the Boston area. Which I guess makes sense, there is soooo much clean energy tech being developed in the area. I was unfortunately just recovered from Covid when I made this video (had to delay by a week before I could even get into the US!), and still super tired. So I wasn't able to see anything except my hotel room and Boston Metal. I definitely need to go back and take a look at some of the other stuff going on there.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Maybe you could do a general video on the technology being developed in the Boston area ? Or in any other scientific/engineering precinct for that matter ? It seems there's plenty going on. I really enjoy how your videos explain the reality , or not , of some of these technologies and how soon we might expect to see them commercially available.
I live close to a Nucor steel recycling mini mill, the electric arc furnace produces about 200 tons per hour on average.
I appreciate they are showing EAF continuing - obviously, the EAF technology is essential in sustaining a circular economy for steel. Interesting to hear this process can possibly tolerate lower grade iron ore - including silicon and other dilution? It would be good to talk about how the BOF, EAF and Boston metals products compare in GWP/kg. There are obvious horizontal issues is obviously the 600KA, which as discussed is similar to the ridiculously intensive Aluminum smelting process- aka solid electricity! Build it adjacent to hydro as we’ve seen ‘hydro’ the Aluminum smelting company in Norway achieve to provide v low GWP Aluminum. Lastly, the term green steel, zero carbon steel etc. all great buzz words but the ESG community is soo confused about all this…. We need clearer messaging to help folks in the industry
Really interested to get Rosie's take on Electra in Boulder USA who are developing a low temp electrolysis method of producing iron from low grade iron ore.
It seems to be that Sadoway has a knack for getting grants and startup funding for "green" tech that ends up fizzling. They've had a DECADE to reproduce what bauxite refining already does, and they haven't even hit production-like machinery? What??
Sadoway is the same professor that has been talking about his "molten metal" battery that hasn't gone anywhere, and now we see plans for a "commercial" design making 100s of kg a day? That isn't even a drop in the ocean compared to the 88 million metric tons of just steel produced annually in the US alone.Even if these units produce 500kg, we'd need over half a million of them operating 24x7 to meet just the US production. And the US is third in steel manufacturing.
It takes a long time to optimize processes like this. The cells will get larger, and they can be ganged as in an aluminum smelter. Sadoway's liquid metal battery IS going somewhere, last I heard.
hope these guys get it and make a bunch of money this is so cool
Ok, that's pretty fucking cool. Biggest issue I see is getting enough electrical power at wanted prices. Especially as datacentres and aluminium smelters are also wanting the exact same thing too.
Also factor in charging all of the new electric cars and phasing in more electric appliances to replace natural gas appliances. We will be forced to build (at great cost) more nuclear power plants.
Thankyou, we have to get rid of the Bessemer process.
This is an important technique in addition to electric arc furnace.
Also for steel, hydrogen reduction being pursued by Sweden and Germany looks promising.
Next we need to solve CO2 problem of cement manufacture, then fertilizer, chemicals, synthetic fuel, the list goes on . .. and on.
Knowledge of materials grew, scientific understanding advanced, and new smelting processes were discovered, The Bessemer Process became obsolete. The method stopped being used in the US completely in 1968. Electric air furnaces and other more technical oxygen steelmaking processes took its place.21 Oct 2021
Amazing and exciting! Thanks, let's see how they will be able to compete with current dirty tech.
Is this process making steel directly or producing iron for making steel?
Would be nice to differentiate this process from other electric arc furnace processes.
They are reducing iron oxide to iron -- steel is a alloying process (adding or removing other elements to/from the iron)
People tend to get this wrong but in reality what we think of as steel is of a medium carbon content, cast iron has more steel and wrought iron has less. It's not that this is pure elemental iron and burning coal introduces carbon to it, it's more that this pig iron has a ton of carbon in it and we need to pump oxygen through it to get rid of some in order to make it into steel.
This is an iron making process and if they could scale it upto 30,000 Tonnes per day, they might be able commercialise. Steel making would occur in the next part of the process. Anyway, good luck to this folks with their endeavours.
The "iron" that comes out of a blast furnace typically contains about 4% Carbon, as well as other impurities which have to be removed in the steel-making process. This is because the iron was reduced with carbon, and so there is a huge excess of it which goes into solution in the iron. In the electrolytic process, the C level should be quite low, as no carbon is involved. Probably likewise for such impurities ans S and P.
Rosie I would give you a two thumbs up if I could. Always learning along side with you.
how many volts ?
And is there a way to restore that energy used in the process by cooling it down to a heat exchanger or something which could be used for other applications like heating homes
It takes a large amount of energy to strip the oxygen atoms from the iron ore, it isn't just left over as heat.
Well, another post disappeared! I've signed in using a different Google account.
The slide in the video saying that iron making using hydrogen needs high grade ore, in limited supply, is correct.
Unfortunately over 70% of steel making equipment needs replacing by 2030, and electrolysis in quantity won't be ready by then.
I omit the links confirming this in case it is some weird spam filter chucking out any posts with links ,search for spglobal's analysis.
But we seem to be in a bit of a fix for decarbonising steel production.
Not all comments with links get deleted, but perhaps that is the reason as I can see this comment but couldn't see the others.
Did you see the earlier video I did on steel where my guest and I talked about the different options for green steel? He basically split things into two, where up to 2030 it would be about reducing emissions in mostly existing equipment and then after would be about moving to zero emissions techs.
ua-cam.com/video/jWD2nI5RhpI/v-deo.html
@@EngineeringwithRosie Yep, interesting video. I would comment more, but it seems a bit difficult here, and I am not a fan of Patreon's sweeping derogations of privacy, so there are several groups I would like to join, and don't mind paying, but don't fancy their conditions.
More on the point, I did post on your interview with Dr Martin on the hassles of piping hydrogen, mainly due to its lower energy by volume.
The post disappeared, but I thought my namesake missed the point, as if we are to hit the targets for GW, there is no way the NG pipelines will have to transport as much energy in, say, the UK or Germany as they currently do.
Better insulation of homes, heat pumps, solar with cooling and use of their heat as in your video visit, and so on and on, all mean that the 30% or so that the converted NG pipelines would need to carry as hydrogen is a pretty good fit.
Of course, 'and another thing' arguments may be made, but the notion that the lower capacity of the NG network converted to carry hydrogen is a showstopper simply makes no sense.
Naturally aside from the costs of conversion, maintaining a network to carry less energy is more expensive per KWh, but that is another argument.
This looks VERY promising technology!
Rosie, in addition to your presence, the professor's mentioning things like costing and such- it doesn't get much realler than that! FR
great research and presentation
Sounds like a promising future technology.
Hello rosie.great job.i have a question please.wich type of iron ore that work with this new process.pellet,lump,powder or low grade...?thanks a lot.
Thanks for showing, that was super interesting and super nessecerry for the future!
Nice, a video title that isn’t posing as a question.
That's how you get the clicks apparently! Though I personally don't notice too much difference in video popularity for the ones with better or more click bait titles. Choosing thumbnails and titles is my least favourite part of YouTubing.
hot stuff !! wonderful to know, hope it comes about soon. OK, bye.
Can you please help me with my math on this? A '600kA' electrolysis cell is supposed to permit production of 1.5 million tons per year of steel.
For round numbers I am assuming metric tons, so this means 1.5 x 10^9 kg of steel per year or simplifying that this is pure iron, 26.9 x 10^9 moles of per year.
This gives me 852 moles per second of iron being produced.
The oxidation number of iron in Fe2O3 is +3, so to reduce 852 moles you need 2.5 x 10^3 Faraday of electrons.
1 Faraday is 96x10^3 amp seconds. So with perfect coulombic efficiency, and if I have my maths correct, I'd expect one would need 246 MA to reach this production level.
Is it possible that a 600kA cell will only produce 1.5 million _pounds_ per year of steel?
Thanks for making these videos, and thanks for checking my math!
-Jon
How tolerant is this system to power outages? AFAIK, a power outage in an aluminum smelter can require weeks or months to restore cells to functioning. Can the rate of production be scaled down, to provide a variable load to the grid?
Can this load follow? So that you could run it at say 1/3 power at night and ramp up to full power during the day when the sun is shining?
It is a little surprising that they could not take more from the similar process used to produce Aluminium. At least as stated they can use power delivery technology from the aluminium side to speed up development to industrial scale.
It would be interesting to know if they had any cost estimates for the industrial process?
Iron ore has a higher melting point than bauxite. Aluminium production does release some CO2 as coke is used as a reducing agent. It's there to "grab" the oxygen so it doesn't recombine with the aluminium.
Actually, the MOE process is simpler. To produce aluminium you take bauxite and refine this to almost pure aluminium oxide (alumina). The electrolysis process then converts alumina to aluminium. Using MOE, iron ore is directly used in the electrolysis process to make pure iron. A full industrial unit operation is thus skipped.
First I want to say I appreciate the way of development - big laboratory instead of intensive powerpointing.
I have questions left:
- what is the difference to the Arc processes?
- what kind of quality is the product - you were already talking about "steel"?
First of all the difference is the graphite electrodes in the common arc furnace, graphite would emit CO2 in this application. Dipping the electrodes in highly oxidised slag would erode them very fast. Then the slags and how this is managed and the arc furnace does not have a controlled atmosphere. The arc furnace is also tilted when tapping, not suitable for a continuous process, So just about everything. Arc furnaces can however handle sponge iron quite well.
The current in the arc furnace is 3 phase AC and generally only about 50 kA.
@@JustNow42 Thanks for explanation.
The MOE process is an electrochemical process where electrons travel through molten slag. They meet FeO and reduce this to Fe and O2. There is no arc involved. Because the anodes are made from special alloys there is no CO2 formed and only pure O2 gas. MOE iron is pure iron without carbon. In the phase diagram, it then is called "steel" but in reality you can't call it steel because real steel has other metals added to it to make it the right grade. This explains why there is often confusion between the term iron and steel in the case of MOE iron.
One question is what type of ores does this process work on? From statements made in Calix’s ZESTY press release it sounded like this process would not be applicable to the major Australian reserves? Would be good to follow up with comparisons to ZESTY and the SSAB HYBRIT
A question that puzzles me: is this method more energy efficient than steelmaking via direct hydrogen reduction + electric arc furnace? I could not find clear, concise information about that in the net so far.
Does it work well for high end high performance and clean steel production?
So there are multiple ways to produce steel without using coal? I need to rewatch your older videos. I was, still are confused why a specific new method is being developed in New Zealand too for "green" steel. As I understand there are scaled semi-commercial green steel plants in Europe and North America, can't we just copy those?
Yep there are several ways. This is the video where we discuss the different ways and pros and cons. ua-cam.com/video/jWD2nI5RhpI/v-deo.html
I didn't know there was an NZ tech in development, I'll have to look it up.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Thanks. Yeah search "Wellington Univentures: Green Steel". Not that advanced yet.
@@EngineeringwithRosie In New Zealand, the steelmaking process is based on iron sands as the raw material. This is fairly unique and they currently use submerged arc furnaces using carbon electrodes. The Uni is seeking to use a hydrogen route while reducing iron sand.
So I am a bit confused. I understand that this is a great CO2-free way of making iron, and that's great! But from what I remember learning in school is that to make steel you need carbon mixed in in the final crystal structure with the iron. So that they can make iron with this process I understand, but it seems impossible to make steel using it?
Thank you, Rosie - a very good video
I love your videos Rosie. However I noticed that you did not talk about price. Today china produce 70% of all steel in the world and growing fast. Europe is shutting down many of our steel mills now, because they cannot compete because Europe fucked up BIG time with our energy politics. I heard that green steel from H2 is 5 - 8 times more expensive than black steel. Thus if this is still the case, we can be absolutely sure that 99.9% of all steel will still be black steel. This is so simple: If you do not have steel and cement and aluminium and electricity, then you cannot build factories, thus your country cannot make products and eventually your economy will fail. European politicians and journalists will manage to "kill" europe long before CO2 ever can. We will have a big crisis and then a big war.
Democratic and "green" countries will fail. Communist and fascist "non-green" countries will thrive. And we all know what the outcome of this will be...
Awesome, love it. I wonder how this tech compares to using induction or microwaves
That doesn't reduce iron, it is a simple melting process. Most small foundries have got rid of their blast furnaces and melt via induction. A local foundry has two 700Kg induction furnaces. Presently one is shut down due to the cost of electricity. If it keeps going, they will shut up shop altogether
Like Robin said, you cannot make iron just by heating ore. This is an electrochemical process that uses electrical energy to break down the ore. Traditionally, energy from coke is used.
I think their process is similar the Cambridge Farthing Process that was invented in Cambridge UK some 25 years ago.
It uses Calcium Oxide as a salt and dissolves the ore in it then electrolysis will reduce the Fe Ox to iron on the electrode and releases O2 on the other. I always thought this would be an eccellent process for metallurgy on the Moon or Mars, as it also produces large qontities of Oxygen that is needed for the life support systems.
However the power hunger of this process is ginormous. So it will need a nuclear plant next door to produce the required power. Otherwise, it will be a bit of an inefficient process if fossile fuels are used for the power generation. But it is too to see that this type of process is finally coming through. And with Russia out of the picture for Titanium for a while, it may also need to be used for that.
Helmut Zollner, the original MOE process is patented by Dr. Sadoway and Dr. Allanore. It has been deeply scrutinized so it is a unique process. From an energy point of view, the objective is to make steel using the MOE process with an amount of energy lesser or equal to conventional steelmaking processes like a blast furnace. The difference is that MOE is 100% electrical energy while standard technology is a combination of electrical energy and chemical energy from coal (coke). As long as we can be more efficient, then we get ahead. Yes, the power generation industry needs to follow suit to keep up with the development of decarbonization tools like MOE that electrify conventional processes. The MOE process is also very efficient for the production of ferro-alloys.
@@MyStevieB I don't doubt that the patents are water tight. The Cambridge process was just the first metallurgical process that did not rely on chemical Energy and in laymens terms electrolyzed the melt and removed oxygen gas from an ore. The paper at the time stated that other metal.
So this new process goes in the same direction.
I see the big potential in these process not only the environmental benefit for the civilization Herron earth, but also for thevspave settlement efforts. It is obviously much more economic to produce building materials and atmosphere from in-situ resources. And these electric processes are perfect for that.
The old chemical processes were only viable because electricity was produced from fossile fuels, so using the coal directly in the process made it more efficient. With electric energy from other sources the chemical process is less useful.
Over all I am very excited to see these new processes coming online. Will make the whole industry a lot cleaner. Hoeever, steel productiin is such a cut-throat busibess, any new process will struggle to gain traction, if the carbon usage is not factored into the pricing. So, here on Earth it is going to be a political decision to adopt these processes.
Having done additional research, I had misunderstood the process. Iron ore can be smelted in an arc furnace by continually injecting carbon monoxide or other reducing agents along with the charge. For this they are proposing doing to iron ore what is already being done with aluminium ore.
So instead of burning the coal to melt and reduce the ore, you are now burning the coal to generate the electricity to power the electrolysis. How can this possibly be economically competitive when the main producers of iron from iron ore in the world are not handicapped by emissions regulations?
Coal is rapidly being removed from the generation mix in many developed countries. Making clean steel obviously requires clean electricity. This is a thing that already exists. We know how to do it.
@@incognitotorpedo42 True.
There is a lot of iron oxide on Mars - it's the reason why it's red. Would a process like this make sense in that setting, given the need not only for structural steel but also oxygen? It probably wouldn't make sense without a pretty serious nuclear powerplant, but might there be a way to directly use the heat from the fission reaction to melt the ore? Maybe a stream of incoming ore powder could even be a coolant for the reactor?
Could this potentially be used for other metal oxides?
question: is the iron produced chemically more pure than that coming from a traditional smelter? I guess it could very well be.
I guess the implication is that it's very similar to aluminium refining. So so economics will be similar to Alumina to aluminium. One might wonder about 'cheap electricity' suppliers to make it work.
Wow, you are far from home. I’m in Boston and never knew this company existed. They don’t get much local press.
@6:40 You've mentioned the current many times. You haven't mentioned the voltage even once. There's no indication of the energy that this process uses to produce the resulting iron. How is a person supposed to compare these result to something like an arc furnace?
Since you have commented several times I can tell you are very interested in this. The answer to your question here above is that when companies meet with us to learn all details, they all sign secrecy agreements. Most information is kept confidential and the voltages are one aspect of this. When they do get the information, they are in a position to make evaluations and comparisons.
@@MyStevieB I see. So be it. One must protect one's intellectual property.
Though more abundant than Bauxite for making Aluminum, electrolyzing Iron ore will make it as expensive. 6 times the price? Not a complaint, but it will change how much steel we use in construction and other places.
13-07-2024.Please do a follow up on this.Thank you.
Brilliant.
The electricity would need to be generated by clean processes or the pollution is simply re-located.
No kidding.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Agreed - it's just that so many people don't consider the whole system...
Did they say what the electrodes were made of, or how they're made? The paper linked just says "chromium alloys", which is kinda vague. It would have to be a pretty interesting material to not corrode, erode, melt, warp, contaminate the steel, or electrolytically deposit at ~1500C in a bath of molten steel and superheated oxygen flue gas while being electrically charged with hundreds of kiloamps...
A quick Google search suggests that chromium is unstable in oxygen above 900 C (and iron at a way lower temperature). This suggests to me that chromium alloys cannot be inert at 1500 C. Actually, since iron melts at 1538 C, the bath temperature must be even higher. Earlier, I suggested that there was something fishy about Boston Metal's claims. I'm now doubling down on that comment.
@@orumadayan1086 Search for the patent by Don Sadoway and Antoine Allanore. Read it thoroughly because then you will understand its exact principles and how this alloy can be used under the conditions.
@@MyStevieB The patent was tough to understand, but I found two papers. One says that the furnace was purged with helium and the other says argon. Even then, the pictures of the anode show a lot of corrosion after 250 minutes. Are you planning to contain a steel plant under argon or helium? Either way, you have a big problem.
Sounds quite possible , the possible week point might be the electrodes. 600 A is quite a lot and it also need to go somewhere ( through the bottom) might not be easy. The attempts to make arcfurnaces DC current did not go well. But ok, I am curious. The competition is using Hydrogen as the swedes try, not the old blast furnaces or carbon capture, but that is expensive.
If the Swedes use hydrogen to make steel, they will go out of business because the cost of hydrogen is not even competitive to natural gas. Carbon capture also adds to the cost of steel. Green steel will put lots of companies and jobs out of work.
@@richardallison8745 the Swedish system is intended to use on site solar electricity to make the H2. That means that by the time they get there the cost of H2 on the open market is less relevant. Also, if other industries like aviation retool to hydrogen or ammonia then the cost of H2 on the market will initially rise due to demand but then plummet as H2 production ramps up.
MOE is an electrolysis process similar to aluminium smelting. The best aluminium smelters run at 500,000 amps. The highest ones run at about 600,000 amps. This is very different from arc furnaces.
@@MyStevieB Very different. Electrolysis in aluminum does not arc but uses huge amounts of electricity. That is why there are almost no primary aluminum production in America because we don't have any hydroelectric dams that are dedicated to making aluminum. Alcoa sold all their primary production in the Tennessee if not the entire US.
@@richardallison8745 Try to look into the future. We need to electrify processes that use carbon. Like many other industries, the power industry will have to reinvent itself by going green and by having to significantly increase its capacities too. Tackling climate change requires some bold thinking and actions. Furthermore, please look again at Alcoa - they are a key partner in Elysis, the inert anode developer for aluminium smelting.
That's great news.
I recently was wondering if steel could be produced electrically.
The slides were a little small on my phone, so the only other input besides the ore is oxygen?
The oxygen is *removed* from the ore, not added. Electric current is what's added, though the actual commercial process is more complicated than just sticking electrodes in a pile of iron ore. If you're on your phone and want more details why don't you try the Boston Metal website, they've got some good diagrams on there and with the static images you can zoom in.
It's also not the only way to electrically make steel. I made a more general video on zero emissions steel a few months back so check that out if you want to know more.
At some level of simplification this is like the way Aluminium is smelted: electrical energy to remove the oxygen from the metal oxides in each case. The energy is needed to replace the energy that was released when the oxides formed a billion years ago.
The details differ between iron and aluminium, of course, but as this video pointed out the issues around the electrical engineering (rather than the electrolysis cells) have already been solved by the Aluminium smelters. They know how to scale up the wiring. That gives them a useful leg up.
But that process doesn't make steel; it makes pure iron. I'm not a metallurgist, so is there an efficient process for turning metallic iron into steel?
Yes, in steelmaking it is called ladle metallurgy. A standard process to add alloys to liquid iron to make steel.
The only benefit that I can see from the abstract of the research paper is that the rate of consumption of the electrodes is greatly reduced compared to a normal arc furnace.
@Kargoneth, the Boston Metal process uses special alloys for anodes and not (carbon) electrodes. This is the core of why this process makes iron without CO2. The other product is oxygen gas.
@@MyStevieB That makes sense. Thanks.
Thank you for this video, it was very interesting, and I am looking forward to more on this!
For instance, is there any public estimate of the cost per Kg of this technology with respect to traditional ones? What are the constraints that bind firms to use one 200 kA cell, instead of two 100 kA ones? The last one might be a bit naive, but I have no engineering background.
From what I know, the cost per kg will be dominated by the cost of electricity plus the cost of the cell amortized over its expected lifetime.
As for cell size, I'm guessing it is a combination of labour efficiency and thermal efficiency. To the former: it takes a lot less work to tap one big cell than it does to tap many little cells. To the latter: the larger the cell, the less electricity will be lost out of the cell as heat. The iron output of the cell is a function of its volume, its heat loss is a function of its surface area. This is why the really small experimental cells had to be heated externally. Volume cubes, surface area squares, so the larger the cell is the more energy efficient it will be.
@@JonMartinYXD That was a great, yet very easy explanation, thank you!
As for the cost, I agree on the long run drivers, but would still be cool to know where we stand now, that is the estimate of current €/Kg and the estimate of the "switch price" of electricity with respect to conventional steel.
my engineering concerns:
- iron ore is far from pure iron oxide, you're gonna deal with sulphur, phosphorus and a whole bunch of other impurities
- immense electricity consumption
- steel prices will jump to aluminum level. Do you really want it?
I mean this is the REAL cost of iron.
The only reason it doesn’t cost more is that we’re all effectively subsidising it by ignoring the environmental cost - which we all pay sooner or later through environmental disaster, illness, etc
The good news is that electricity is source agnostic. You can power it with wind, solar, hydro etc. Or nuclear!
So the cost should only decrease over time
if this process is carbon free, then the iron ore has to have no carbon itself? or somehow the carbon doesn't combust and you adjust the carbon content by regulating the amount of siderite and lemonite? are there limitations on the kinds of ore you can put in?
Iron ore has little to no carbon. In the video they said they could use ore that other processes couldn't use, so it sounds pretty flexible.
@@incognitotorpedo42 actually that depends on the iron ore, and you always have to be careful, tech companies, particularly startups bullshit a lot and i mean A LOT, i have experience, believe me, and back to the carbon, for example siderite's formula is FeCO3, so there is definitely carbon, and you just cant magically disappear it, it will recombine to something else, like for example co2, thats why im at the very least curious about the claims
I am confused. Is the process smelting iron or producing steel. Constant references are made to iron in the video. How many Kwh/Tonne of product?, this is the important metric at the end of the day.
We did talk primarily about iron as that's the main part, with the most emissions normally. You can add carbon etc to the molten metal to get steel in the single process.
Where (and how) do you add the carcon to turn the iron into steel?
200kA is how many kw and kwh ?
This would give an insight into how many solar PV panels are needed, or wind power generators.
Just to be that guy n' all, but the phrase: "Swapping electricity for coal in steelmaking ", means to get rid of electricity and use coal instead. While I don't particularly think it's very important, you might want to swap "coal" and "electricity" around in the title for consistency.
At any rate, great video!
Ha, I had it the other way and then thought it sounded like the opposite and swapped it at the last second 🙂 I'm still not 100% sure about the title in general, got any different suggestions that are catchy yet accurate?
Honestly I ain't too good atcoming up with catchy titles, more of a dull straight forward type of person, but honestly I think it'd be entirely fine if just swapped around.
It's informative and accurate, though you might want to watch Veritasiums video on how to do titles and thumbnails (about the neccesity of clickbait) if you havn't it might give somw better ideas than what I can do.
Ps. please do apologise spelling errors, I despise smartphone touchpads for writing, but it's what I have at the moment.
@@EngineeringwithRosie "Using electricity instead of coal when making iron" would be accurate.
What is the range of carbon content in the steel that this process can produce? Can this process produce steel grades with normal concentrations of trace materials? Can this process produce steel varieties chemically superior (in some way) to the traditional process?
mjmeans, because we don't use carbon in the production process, the iron produced with the MOE process is free of carbon. In a separate process step after the iron is tapped, steelmakers add other metals to convert the iron into steel. It then has the exact same properties as standard steel.
@@MyStevieB Thank you very much. That explains why I was confused. The title of the video suggests that the new process for making steel, when it actually makes elemental iron, or iron oxide. When adding the additional processes needed to create steel from the elemental iron or iron oxide the new process produces is considered, is net CO2 produced more of less CO2 than the old process end to end? I'm wondering if the CO2 burden (or budget) is just being shifted to a later stage of steel production or if there is a net increase or decrease; and whether this new process is better utilized, at least initially, for elemental iron uses other than for steel production.
@@mjmeans7983 No, once you produce the iron carbon-free that benefit is upheld further down the processes. In the steps where steel products are made (like the rolling mill), all parameters remain the same. However, you don't need a pelletizing plant or a coke-making plant. The avoidance of this has other considerable environmental benefits too.
@@MyStevieB Thank you very much for that explanation. I hope the technology can ultimately grow to be cost competitive without the need for government intervention.
You're saying this is carbon-free; but how is the needed energy generated? Are we just switching carbon emissions from the smelter to the power plant? What is in the slag? He said it is recycled: into what? How does the cost/kg compare to the present method, specifically? "Costing" is mentioned but just how much more is this? I'm not getting excited yet.
This is 'he'. The process is 100% carbon free because it uses electricity as the reduction agent. Scope 2 emissions can be carbon-free too if the method of power generation is also CO2 free. This is where we are going in the future. The slag is considered standard and used in cement plants like BF slag is today. I hope you are getting a little more excited now.
When you say the temperature goes up to 1600 do you mean 1600F or 1600C? I think it is 1600C which is 2912F. Are they using plasma torches to get to that temperature? They should look at what Ovako Steel in Sweden did with plasma torches to produce DRI. i know that ADL back in the day looked at something like this.
It is 1600 degC. Just above the melting point of iron. It may surprise you but the MOE process generates enough heat to sustain the temperature.
I assume that the electricity to power this can come from solar rather than coal. If that's the case, why are we not doing this in Australia where there is an abundance of sunlight close to where there is an abundance of iron ore? We could be selling iron rather than iron ore.
Seems like a great opportunity. There are already plans to export all kinds of power-hungry chemicals, why not steel too.
@@w0ttheh3ll I think we used to until China worked out how to do it cheaper because their labour and safety and pollution laws were less strict than ours. Now we just send iron ore :(