Jessica Allen, University of Newcastle and Tom Honeyands, University of Newcastle
Steel is a major building block of our modern world, used to make everything from cutlery to bridges and wind turbines. But the way it’s made – using coal – is making climate change worse.
On average, almost two tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) are emitted for every tonne of steel produced. This accounts for about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Cleaning up steel production is clearly key to Earth’s low-carbon future.
Fortunately, a new path is emerging. So-called “green steel”, made using hydrogen rather than coal, represents a huge opportunity for Australia. It would boost our exports, help offset inevitable job losses in the fossil fuel industry and go a long way to tackling climate change.
Australia’s abundant and cheap wind and solar resources mean we’re well placed to produce the hydrogen a green steel industry needs. So let’s take a look at how green steel is made, and the challenges ahead.
Steeling for change
Steel-making requires stripping oxygen from iron ore to produce pure iron metal. In traditional steel-making, this is done using coal or natural gas in a process that releases CO₂. In green steel production, hydrogen made from renewable energy replaces fossil fuels.
Australia exports almost 900 million tonnes of iron ore each year, but only makes 5.5 million tonnes of steel. This means we have great capacity to ramp up steel production.
A Grattan Institute report last year found if Australia captured about 6.5% of the global steel market, this could generate about A$65 billion in annual export revenue and create 25,000 manufacturing jobs in Queensland and New South Wales.
Steel-making is a complex process and is primarily achieved via one of three processes. Each of them, in theory, can be adapted to produce green steel. We examine each process below.
Read more: Australia could fall apart under climate change. But there’s a way to avoid it
1. Blast furnace
Globally, about 70% of steel is produced using the blast furnace method.
As part of this process, processed coal (also known as coke) is used in the main body of the furnace. It acts as a physical support structure for materials entering and leaving the furnace, among other functions. It’s also partially burnt at the bottom of the furnace to both produce heat and make carbon monoxide, which strips oxygen from iron ore leaving metallic iron.
This coal-driven process leads to CO₂ emissions. It’s feasible to replace a portion of the carbon monoxide with hydrogen. The hydrogen can strip oxygen away from the ore, generating water instead of CO₂. This requires renewable electricity to produce green hydrogen.
And hydrogen cannot replace carbon monoxide at a ratio of 1:1. If hydrogen is used, the blast furnace needs more externally added heat to keep the temperature high, compared with the coal method.
More importantly, solid coal in the main body of the furnace cannot be replaced with hydrogen. Some alternatives have been developed, involving biomass – a fuel developed from living organisms – blended with coal.
But sourcing biomass sustainably and at scale would be a challenge. And this process would still likely create some fossil-fuel derived emissions. So to ensure the process is “green”, these emissions would have to be captured and stored – a technology which is currently expensive and unproven at scale.
Read more: Australians want industry, and they’d like it green. Steel is the place to start
2. Recycled steel
Around 30% of the world’s steel is made from recycled steel. Steel has one of the highest recycling rates of any material.
Steel recycling is mainly done in arc furnaces, driven by electricity. Each tonne of steel produced using this method produces about 0.4 tonnes of CO₂ – mostly due to emissions produced by burning fossil fuels for electricity generation. If the electricity was produced from renewable sources, the CO₂ output would be greatly reduced.
But steel cannot continuously be recycled. After a while, unwanted elements such as copper, nickel and tin begin to accumulate in the steel, reducing its quality. Also, steel has a long lifetime and low turnover rate. This means recycled steel cannot meet all steel demand, and some new steel must be produced.
3. Direct reduced iron
“Direct reduced iron” (DRI) technology often uses methane gas to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which are then used to turn iron ore into iron. This method still creates CO₂ emissions, and requires more electricity than the blast furnace method. However its overall emission intensity can be substantially lower.
The method currently accounts for less than 5% of production, and offers the greatest opportunity for using green hydrogen.
Up to 70% of the hydrogen derived from methane could be replaced with green hydrogen without having to modify the production process too much. However work on using 100% green hydrogen in this method is ongoing.
Read more: For hydrogen to be truly ‘clean’ it must be made with renewables, not coal
Becoming a green steel superpower
The green steel transition won’t happen overnight and significant challenges remain.
Cheap, large-scale green hydrogen and renewable electricity will be required. And even if green hydrogen is used, to achieve net-zero emissions the blast furnace method will still require carbon-capture and storage technologies – and so too will DRI, for the time being.
Private sector investment is needed to create a global-scale export industry. Australian governments also have a big role to play, in building skills and capability, helping workers retrain, funding research and coordinating land-use planning.
Revolutionising Australia’s steel industry is a daunting task. But if we play our cards right, Australia can be a major player in the green manufacturing revolution.
Jessica Allen, Senior Lecturer and DECRA Fellow, University of Newcastle and Tom Honeyands, Director, Centre for Ironmaking Materials Research, University of Newcastle
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon.
If hydrogen is used to reduce the iron oxide to iron, carbon is still needed to form steel. Where is the carbon coming from?
These two idiots think that the world is abandoning mining. We have the internet and can read about the increase in coal production from all around the world outside of Europe Aus Canada and US. For one of the idiots to be in charge of materials research reminds me of Fauci and Daszac and their web of deceit just to continue the funding – lying for the cause. Couldn’t give e a dam about the consequences. Some day these bastards have got to pay for their crimes.
I don’t think there is an increase in coal mining, except where countries want to produce it locally rather than import it…
Only China is now substantially expanding coal power plants… India is tailing off, much of SE Asia has cut back/halted coal power plant…
coal power plant construction is essential halted in the whole of N and S America and UK and EU
“Only China is now substantially expanding coal power plants… India is tailing off, much of SE Asia has cut back/halted coal power plant…” Data?
What sort of power plants are being constructed in African nations?
so you agree with the comment then …
I wonder where they will get the Coal to power the 300 Coal fired power plants currently being built, plus the 200 more planned to be built.
Dream on Griff, you are so far out of touch with the real world dreams are where you live.
Griff is paid to disseminate misinformation
and china exporting a lot of steel all over the world…
Is that right? The IPCC scenario RCP8.5 (the one everyone uses in predicting catastrophic warming) is based on an ever increasing use of coal. Surely these eminent people cannot be wrong?
Wrong again:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants
Yeah coal is really struggling
https://www.globalcoal.com/news-events/news.cfm
Hell it could struggle all the way to $150 a ton this year.
I don’t think
Could have ended it there, Griff, and saved electricity and CO2 by not typing out the rest.
Response may have been a little more positive.
Instead you kept typing and ended up saying that coal wasn’t being used… except where it is being used.
Well done Griff. Greta will remember you on her birthday.
Has Greta Humbug retired on the money her parents were given for her to be used as a useful idiot?
Loony leftism and effects on display. Don’t let facts get in the way of a good virtue signal.
Smiths have been using charcoal (wood) for centuries, to make crucible steel.
Using hydrogen (from weather dependant sources) for smelting, is a sullution in search of a problem.
You will need a massive supply of wood. We already have a massive supply processed by nature and buried for future use, known as coal.
Bsl posted: “Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon.”
Yes, exactly! And this (from https://www.meadmetals.com/blog/steel-grades#:~:text=Carbon%20Steel%20is%20divided%20into,more%20than%200.6%25%20carbon). :
“Carbon Steels only contain trace amounts of elements besides carbon and iron. This group is the most common, accounting for 90% of steel production. Carbon Steel is divided into three subgroups depending on the amount of carbon in the metal: Low Carbon Steels/Mild Steels (up to 0.3% carbon), Medium Carbon Steels (0.3–0.6% carbon), and High Carbon Steels (more than 0.6% carbon).”
Not only that, one of the critical failure modes for high strength steels (alloys with yield strengths above 1000 MPa (145 ksi) is hydrogen embrittlement, a phenomenon well-known to metallurgists. (ref: https://www.imetllc.com/training-article/hydrogen-embrittlement-steel/?doing_wp_cron=1622901571.8583290576934814453125 )
Hydrogen can be “baked out” of steels by holding the solid metal at high temperatures for long time periods, but that will, of course, require the expenditure of additional energy to make a given quantity of steel at any grade. So, the last thing one would want to do is use hydrogen within the melt, or have free hydrogen anywhere near the molten alloy.
Also, reliable energy that generates continuous heat to temper and mitigate defect formation. Steel production is neither green (i.e. color, not content – carbon-based) nor amenable to Green (i.e. amenable to intermittent/renewable) energy.
It is my understanding that hydrogen introduce early in the steel making process is almost impossible to remove. The effective baking temperature range for removing hydrogen from steel is between 375 and 400 degrees F. The diffusion process is very slow. Heating to higher temperature causes the hydrogen to react with the carbon present to form methane, which in turn causes methane embrittlement. I have never heard of an effective method of removing the methane.
Is this why, back in the day, (60’s), some new car owners would start and then keep their engines running for ( I believe) 500 hours to condition the block?
I think that was the first 500 miles to wear in the piston rings and all the bearings.
Don’t think so . . . a water-cooled, oil-lubricated engine block could not afford peak metal temperatures anywhere much over 300 deg-F to avoid overheating, scorching the oil and permanently warping the engine-valve blocks. The possible exceptions to this would be the surface temperatures of the exhaust valves and exhaust manifold
I believe what you are referring to was an old-time practice of “conditioning” or “setting in” the engine rings and combustion chamber valves (and, perhaps, valve pushrods). And my understanding of performing this process was to do it on a new engine starting with very short single engine runs (maybe as low as 5 minutes) and progressively increasing single run durations up to maybe at most 30 minutes. By the time one had accumulated 3-4 hours of doing this gradual break-in process (equivalent to about 200 miles driven at speed), >90% of the benefits of doing such had been obtained. Major benefits claimed were reduced oil consumption and longer engine life, compared to just jumping into a new car and driving it willy-nilly.
The underlying rationale back then was that doing this process allowed running friction to smooth out (“hone”) any excessively tight or even mismatched fits between sliding/contacting parts WITHOUT developing very high frictional/impact heating as would happening from the running the engine continuously (i.e., up to its high steady-state temperature) during this break-in period.
I further understand that this “expert”-advised process, to the extent that it might actually have been beneficial, was largely abandoned by about 1975 due to the greatly improved accuracy developed around that time in machining parts and maintaining dimensional fits & clearances for large automated machines that were doing mass production.
My memory about this may be suffering, so I certainly invite others with perhaps first-hand experience to chime in.
I think that metallurgical myth might be based upon the heating/cooling cycles and vibration aligning the iron molecules in the block and ‘de-stressing’ it.
Way back when, BMW (it was claimed) made their F1 engines from old 2000/2002 engine blocks for that reason. They were said to have found that an old one was more reliable @ur momisugly 1,000 BHP for qualifying times than a fresh casting.
“To reduce inner tentions within the engine blocks BMW only took those ones that had done more than 100.000 kilometres – ” they are like well-hung meat,” as engineer Paul Rosche said, who had a very close relationship to Nelson Piquet considering him as a perfect test driver. Later a special treatment had been invented to imitate this high kilometre performance to avoid BMW to run out of old engine blocks. And the 4-cylinder-unit with up to 11.000 revs per minute demanded a verx “heavy” fuel to prevent the engine from blowing up. That synthetic petrol produced out of cole came from a German refinery and its recipe was based on a patent the Nazis once had developed for war purposes.”
Though that might also be an urban myth.
In order reduce iron from it’s native ore state (oxide or sulfide), it must be placed in a reducing atmosphere at sufficient temperature such that the reducing agent (carbon monoxide or hydrogen) will react with the oxygen in the ore. Seems like pretty basic chemistry. I don’t see a problem other than the economics.
hydrogen embrittlement … as was pointed out above
Except that is not the chemical process in operation.
Air is supplied at pressure (blast) into the coke/melt with causes the coke to burn at much higher temperatures,
The carbon from the coke/lime pulls oxygen from the iron oxides; primary oxides in iron ore are Fe₃O₄ and Fe₂O₃.
N.B., the iron oxides supply more oxygens than single oxygen atoms.
The high heats used in the process allow carbon to fill out molecules using oxygen from the oxides. That is, CO₂ is the primary exhaust gas.
Actually, I believe that in the multistep process that forms carbon steels from iron ore (mostly ferrous oxides directly from mines), one of the very first steps is to react coking carbon (“coke”, a porous high-purity form of carbon derived from coal) with a lower-than-stoichiometric-ratio of oxygen (that is, an oxygen-starved reaction) to form mostly carbon monoxide (CO).
That CO is then passed over the heated iron oxides where it is more more efficient in removing the oxygen-bound-to-iron than “carbon from the coke/lime” would be. That is true independent of the iron oxides being in the form of the minerals hematite (Fe₂O₃), magnetite (Fe₃O₄), limonite/bog-iron ore (2Fe2O3·3H2O), or siderite (FeCO3).
Upon removing the oxygen from the ore feedstock, the iron ore is reduced to molten iron and the CO if further oxidized to CO2, whereupon it become most of the exhaust product of steel-making.
Gordon:
I worked in a steel factory using the blast furnace process and observed both the iron works and open hearth in action.
They were building an electric arc furnace since Japan was eating America’s lunch in the high quality steel market place, but I believe the ore was going to be reduced in the ironworks and the high carbon melt sent to the arc furnace for refining.
USS closed the plant before they got that into serious operation.
Once in the furnace, there are zero attempts to convert coke to CO.
The process of converting coal to coke then combusting coke to smelt or refine ferrous oxide into iron into steel is not setup to form solely CO. The coke burns in air forced through the melt. Any CO formed quickly grabs a second oxygen atom as there a plenty in the oxides.
Open hearth operators charged the furnaces from above using a massive machine that picked up rail cars of material and then emptied them into the furnace through the blast doors.
The most reactive additions to the melt were the car loads of limestone.
The operator would pick up a limestone rail car, extend it into the furnace, turn it upside down and briefly shake the car.
Then the operator would retract the boom and as soon as the rail car cleared the furnace doors, he would run the machine sideways as flames would quickly reach where the operator sits.
Everything else added to the melt were tame in comparison.
Or are you referring strictly to the oxygen furnace process which does include a percentage of CO flow through? I referenced and linked the oxygen process in my comment at “June 5, 2021 9:55 am”.
It is really hard to repair the stupid indoctrination from a liberal arts college education, as these writers (Jessica Allen and Tom Honeyands) demonstrate. There’s is a cringe-worthy level of stupid and they don’t even realize it when they write pieces like this.
I wonder at the insanity too.
just imagine the logistics of production, consolidation, storage and transport of that much hydrogen. Then include the heat and vibration in whatever you’re bringing it into a blast furnace with.
I predict a lot of very, very large explosions, fires, deaths, and sad but stupid investors.
Loony leftism going full tilt.
BsL
The carbon content of steel is typically 0.1 to 0.4%. It is important in the properties, but insignificant in the quantities.
That’s mild steel. Many more grades use >0.4% considering the eutectic is at 0.8% and technically 2% or less is classified as steel.
Steel is made from high carbon iron; approximately 2% carbon in the form of carbides and graphite.
High carbon steels, famous for use as knives, swords and whatnot are typically 0.4% up to 1% carbon in the form of carbides.
Unless alloyed with specific metals that form their own hard carbides, steels under 0.4% are not considered high carbon steels.
Hydrogen embrittlement is a major problem in steel production. Any process that increases the hydrogen in the steel is bad! If you need real low hydrogen steel and after measurement the value is to high you either start over again, or keep the steel above about 1500 degrees F for days to allow the hydrogen to escape. Either way would use more carbon than just doing steel production in the way we have for a long time.
Good point. Steel is iron with a certain small percentage of carbon in it. If it contains no carbon it’s not steel, it’s too soft. It’s funny too, I didn’t know that you could reduce iron ore with hydrogen, I thought that it was the other way about. I remember something in school chemistry about iron being used to reduce steam to make hydrogen.
As I understand it, steel making is a matter of removing carbon from the iron, not adding it. After the iron is first reduced from ore, it has a high carbon content from the coke and is cast iron. Blast furnaces make it into steel by burning out the extra carbon.
From looking at the alternative methods in the article, sounds like coal is the way to go.
Ironic, but Rearden Steel in Atlas Shrugged was colored green (alloyed w/copper).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged
So what they are really saying is it can’t be done.
There are parts that can be done, but at a lot higher cost than current. The only way to make it economic (you can’t make green hydrogen economically) is put the price of carbon so high that the hydrogen is viable. Then no-one will buy it because the price is too high. So the industrial world stops and we go back to living in caves. Great scheme there.
So the industrial world stops and we go back to living in caves – Didn’t you realise that was the intention all along
Can’t do that because of a severe shortage of caves. Another shortsighted example of green thinking.
What industry is saying it’s a minimum of 20years away and building conventional plants
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2189095-green-steel-20-years-away-bluescope-steel
“Australia could fall apart under climate change.”
Should be:
Australia could fall apart under climate change REGULATIONS
It’s all sounding beautiful — except for the generating enough hydrogen part. Hydrogen is abundant in waters surrounding Australia (I don’t think the authors meant getting it from fossil sources) but this doesn’t make it easily available and amounts required to generate enough energy for steel-making processes is simply mind boggling, not to mention spent electrolytes polluting the environment. Yeah, being an expert in metallurgy doesn’t make one an expert in energy generation…
Hydrogen is abundant wherever there is water or ice. The real problem is extracting it without using much more energy than it can produce by being combusted with oxygen. 🙂
They’re just two highly educated useful idiots. The costs of producing steel using hydrogen would make it uncompetitive for both internal and external markets, which means tariffs and taxes would be necessary to keep their “green dream” alive. But, then again, people who always sucked at the public teat wouldn’t give a thought to costs and productivity
Or, as was once explained to me, educated beyond their intelligence.
A prime reminder that Educated and Intelligent are different words.
Personally I feel the prime function of higher education is to keep the un-employable out of the cluttered youth job market for as long as possible.
I remember from welding classes that hydrogen in steel makes it brittle.
Low hydrogen rods are made to keep this under control, as well as keeping all electric arch rods absolutely dry in a heated compartment what do others know
and they use coke to make steel which has all the hydrocarbons removed
epic..
You know, I knew that from my welding classes at age = 15, but ‘didn’t know it’. you know?
Certainly explains a lot of my welding hits and misses over the last 4 decades.
I’m driven nuts that, just as I retired from farming (needs a fair amount of welding) I acquired an inverter welder.
It is THE sweetest little nut I have ever bought – and now – have next to no use for it
Its Just Not Fair. snot fair
Stuff steel recycling.
No recycler si vous plais. — nessun riciclaggio per favore. — без переработки пожалуйста — Bitte kein Recycling — 請不要回收 — hakuna kuchakata tafadhali
Got that???
Uno wot, lets give Greta the last word: ingen återvinning tack
THE VERY BEST THING to to with old/second-hand steel is simply to drop it into the nearest sea/ocean or even large lake to make artificial reefs
Doing so will create massively more Global Greening that even Carbon Oxide is cracked (sp) up to do – and by a VERY long chalk.
Go on, be a devil, Make Friends With Fishes
…..maybe even give them an old Tesla or 2 to play with – much more use to them AND The Climate, than us
Um, all a company has to do to make green steel is to simply buy carbon offsets, isn’t that right?
Martin Luther had a thing about indulgences.
You can use surface conversion to make it look green
Not going to happen. We import steel, and we always will. Aluminium will be the next industry to exit Australia. Heck, we export LNG for cents and import it for dollars. Madness! Mad Max Madness!
Germany still has an aluminium industry
Yeah, right up there near the top of aluminum production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_primary_aluminium_production
Right up there with Mozambique.
That table ranks Australia first, but the production number cited puts it between Bahrain and the UAE. I don’t get it.
I’m married. I’ve learned to simply mentally note discordant facts and move on with life. Life doesn’t make sense.
Yeah, we expect better from wikipedia. /sarc/
Which gets non-carbon-taxed electricity to keep it from leaving.
Not for long if your masters have their way
Germany exports most of its car manufacturing to other countries.
Griff, what does the existence of a German industry have to do with Australia?
Your manor lord has solar. Technically correct but not remotely related to the discussion.
It wasn’t that long ago (in the 80s & 90s)that Australia became a major “green” aluminum supplier. It did that by building a nuclear power plant near a Bauxite mining region. Viola, instant success! Now that nuclear is evil in the Catastrophic Global Warming religion, I guess it’s no longer Green.
Australia has never had a nuclear power plant.
You’re right, and I’m quite surprised. It must have been a conventional plant dedicated to aluminum production.. I was told that it was nuclear. Australia is the 6th largest producer of Aluminum.
Wrong on all counts Tom. I don’t know where you got your information. Australia has never had a nuclear power station, nor was there ever any major power station or smelter near the bauxite mines. Bauxite is mined in the remote north. The smelters are in the south near the coalfields over 3,000km away. There is one smelter in Victoria (propped up by massive subsidies to keep it afloat) and 2 in the Hunter Valley — 1 shut down a few years back due to high power prices, and the other is on its knees after having its power supply curtailed 3 times in a week recently to keep the grid from crashing. They run on coal power not green power.
No uranium for peaceful intentions, lots for weapons.
There are words to describe being so hypocritical.
Australia does have a nuclear plant, just not for nuclear power. The anti-nuclear stance in Australia is utter madness driven by the uninformed and fear.
Lucas Heights.
Discuss the technical differences.
“The raw materials needed for the production of one ton of aluminium are 4 tons of bauxite, 80 kilos of artificial cryolite, about 600 kilos of carbon electrodes, and some 23,000 kw. of electric energy. The process time varies from 100 to 130 hours.” from https://www.nature.com/articles/146713b0
Solar panels can supply all of the needed electric energy.
And the energy is free.
I was told about this at the pub.
Where CO2 is Ok in beer for now.
A chemist and a steel guy at the University of Newcastle (yes, you can chuckle at the irony) want to make steel without using coal, but admit they will have to use coal to make the coal-less steel. Because, you know – steel. Someone realized that they could use Australia’s massive surplus of solar and wind energy to separate hydrogen from water molecules, and use the hydrogen to make steel, because it can take the oxygen out of iron ore and make more water molecules. Of course it’s an endothermic reaction so they’ll need heat from somewhere, and they admit gas won’t get hot enough, so they’ll use SOME coal along with the gas. And they need carbon atoms to amalgamate with the iron to make steel, so they’ll use SOME coal to provide that carbon. I’m not in the mood to do the mass balance equations they forgot to show us, or maybe like me they knew the results would be depressing so they didn’t do them. But I’ll guess the amount of coal they’re going to need in their hydrogen-replaces-coal scheme is about 85% of the amount of coal currently being used. I think they should find some other use for that incredibly huge energy surplus Australia is getting from solar and wind. They can’t store it in Elon Musks batteries forever.
Yes, it’s a story driven madness with reality as a minor component.
Nevertheless, one company is engaged in rational recovery and use of reduced gases emitted in iron and steel making, but their whole being is based on faulty green premises. Still, they can mine government credits and green messaging to make money.
https://www.lanzatech.com/
“Coals to Newcastle,” and “the irony.”
That’s a double chuckle.
Madness abounds. Actually no they just want another bag of OPM . . .
What nonsense, saying it should be done but can’t be done. The Newcastle professors think they are greenies and I think they are useful fools for China.
“The Conversation” is a third rate source for reliable information despite their claim of “academic rigour” and support of a “healthy media ecosystem” whatever that may be.
As a Third Rate Source myself I resent being associated with those people!
Triggered even!
Australia can’t even afford to make conventional steel because of taxes, high energy prices and regulations, so the idea of Australia “seizing the market” with really expensive green steel is a total joke. Much easier to buy conventional steel from China and pay the supplier to provide a fake green steel certificate.
The Irainas had it cracked. I visited a steel mill in Iran in the 70s and they had more or less a perpetual motion equivalent. The arc furnaces melted the steel (taking care not to include unexploded ammo frim the scrapped military vehicles), created billets with continuous casting, rolled the bilets into wire/rod, then chopped it up when it didn’t meet standards and fed it back into the arc furnaces.
“The green steel transition won’t happen overnight”
Certainly not with solar panels….. wha…wha…whaaaa.
“The green steel transition won’t happen.”
There, fixed.
This is OT, but you might like to know of it. Kid’s electric scooter left in house’s hallway some time earlier caught fire without any warning. Fortunately, the boy’s father acted quickly managed to throw the scooter out just before exploded but ended with a burn on his arm. Lithium batteries are permanent hazard!
We’re going to be hearing a lot more stories like this as lithium batteries proliferate.
I work for a media company here in Australia and their preferred corporate PC is a MS Surface. We have many users that report swelling batteries, a common problem. I have advised management that these devices, in this state, are an extreme fire hazard. Nothing is being done. Most users, due to COVID-19, now work from home. My work PC is a Surface too, I leave it at work and dial in remotely, I refuse to have it in my home.
good idea.
There are already operating green steel plants using hydrogen (e.g. Linz, Austria) and others recycling steel.
a commercial plant or a proof of concept experiment ?
From the Linz website the plant is actually a ” 6MW plant used to test whether the technology deployed to produce green hydrogen is suitable for use on an industrial scale*
So a prototype not a full scale steel plant.
Also from their website:
“The most important precondition for scenario planning based on green electricity and green hydrogen is, however, sufficient quantities of renewable energy available at commercially realistic prices. This is the only way in which we can apply tomorrow’s technologies in a truly competitive manner,”
Griff always forgets the details. Here in Australia, CH4 is still used to make hydrogen on an industrial scale.
Conversation + Grattan institute = entertaining fantasy land
Snugglepot and Cuddlepie have more academic rigour.
“Some alternatives have been developed, involving biomass – a fuel developed from living organisms”
uh, no- it’s developed from DEAD organisms
All steel will be made in China. That’s the plan.
The world will happily buy Australian green steel at three times the price.
It is an idea without much understanding of the issue.
yes, Iron ore needs to be reduced. But that is done by Carbon Monoxide, not by CO2. Yes, some CO2 will always get produced when coke is used. Coke also provides enough spacing (porosity) between chunks iron ore + fluxing components (dolomites etc., if I recall correctly) so that evolved CO can reach everywhere.
Even if Hydrogen is readily available at very cheap cost, it will be difficult to use them in Blast furnaces. One has to control their rate of reaction, temperature of the H2 fire (much high) as some heat is needed to smelt the ores & fluxes and then one has to make the H2 reach everywhere within the ore agglomerate.
Then making of H2 is very high heat intensive process…..
I’ve a degree in metallurgy and materials engineering. I have over 25 years experience in industry.
I’ll tell you for free that “green steel” is an impossibility on the scale required.
1.6 billion tonnes of steel is produced every year. 1.5 billion via the blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace route. 0.1 billion tonnes is via the direct reduction and electric arc furnace route.
Direct reduction using hydrogen is less than 500 tonnes and mostly research based. It doesn’t register.
DRI using hydrogen is 30% more expensive and there is no way to produce enough hydrogen to convert iron and steel making on world wide scale to this method.
That’s it. There is no argument.
Hang on it’s simply having enough solar PV available to produce enough hydrogen.
I’m more worried about the explosion hazard.
kzb, hang on . . . it’s simply having enough land surface area covered by solar PV panels (and the associated grid & power conversion infrastructure) to produce enough hydrogen to produce enough steel.
Oh . . . and enough of the right kind of weather . . . that too!
++
Where do the people who write pap like this come from?
From our wonderful school systems.
The Lunatics have tanken over the Institutions of Society and they are teaching the young to be lunatics, too.
Rusty, please don’t bring facts and experienced judgment to a girlie fight.
“Rusty.” Heh…
Nono, industrial engineers do not have journalism degrees, so they never write about unicorns and fairy dust as told to them by deep thinkers who think deep thoughts but never act on their ideas.
We have energy companies here in Australia advertising hydrogen is the future for energy production. What they forget to included in that ad is the fact CH4 is used to make that hydrogen. You may as well just burn the CH4.
I have a BSME and MSME, but am not a metals specialist. This despite the fact that my family was in iron and steel. My mother would iron, and my father would steel…though I think he spelled it different.
I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night…
What am I missing?
They are going to make hydrogen from water, presumably using electricity, which will be produced how?
Then they are going to make the steel by burning the hydrogen somehow which will produce heat and water vapour which is a GHG several times more powerful than CO2.
This will reduce GHG warming?
I still have Unicorns available.
This was my first thought also. They exchange one so called GHG for another and pat themselves on the back.
A slight? problem here in the logic, whatever that is these days. Burning Hydrogen produces water. Water is Greenhouse Gas, SO WE ARE TOLD. So: all we are doing here is replacing one greenhouse gas (CO2) with another (Water).🤔🤯🤭😉
It’s true H2O is a greenhouse gas. But also it is under equilibrium control. Adding more water vapour simply means more rain, not more warming.
Kzb
You just destroyed CAGW.
kzb posted: “Adding more water vapour simply means more rain.”
People living in a deserts or in areas currently experiencing desertification may or may not appreciate that news, depending upon how it is interpreted.
However much water vapour we emit, it is nothing compared to that which evaporates from the oceans.
Agree!
Unfortunately not. CO2 and methane don’t become saturated at a certain temperature like water vapour does. Raise the temperature with CO2 and the air can hold more water vapour. This is the “positive feedback” they keep going on about.
Which then also causes the droughts that they also keep going on about.
ha ha … water vapor is NEVER at equilibrium … rising or falling … more water vapor <> more rain …
What goes up must come down.
But aren’t we all (by ‘all’, I mean the crazy socialist types) trying to _stop_ climate change, which presumably includes making it rain more?
In the real world, the scientific evidence is overwhelming that CO2 emissions are beneficial, not harmful, and the “social cost of carbon” is negative.
What IS harmful is the leftist propaganda from The Conversation.
The hard-left The Conversation is totally in the tank for climate alarmism. In Sept. 2019 they announced that the only opinions they would permit to be expressed in article comments are those in support of climate hysteria. They wrote, “the editorial team in Australia is implementing a zero-tolerance approach to moderating climate change deniers, and sceptics. Not only will we be removing their comments, we’ll be locking their accounts.”
Even before that, The Conversation long had two moderation policies: the official written one (their “Community Standards,” which are basically Quora’s BNBR + “Be Constructive”), and the actual one (“Be Leftist”). No matter how nice, respectful & constructive you were, and no matter how thoroughly you documented your claims, suspicion of casting doubt on the climate emergency was grounds for deleting your comments at The Conversation. But no matter how vicious ad hominem attacks are, they’re acceptable if they are directed toward someone skeptical of the climate crisis.
Although they’ve made their anti-scientific bias official, I’m still waiting for them to change their name to “The One-Sided Conversation.” Or, in keeping with the modern trend toward shortening names…
“Kentucky Fried Chicken” ⇒ “KFC”
“The Huffington Post” ⇒ “HuffPo”
“Federal Express” ⇒ “FedEx”
“America Online” ⇒ “AOL”
…I have a suggestion for them:
“The One-Sided Conversation” ⇒ “The Con”
“The One-Sided Conversation” ⇒ “The Con”
I like it! An accurate description.
The Conversation is just typical socialist nomenclature, like Open Mind, Real Climate and Skeptical Science, all of these mean exactly the opposite of their title.
Once upon a time, oil from whales was valuable enough that people sailed on long trips that took them from New England, all the way around South America to the northern pacific to hunt whales and then all the way back.
And then somebody figured out that we could get oil easily from the ground. And BAM, the world changed. For the better.
If anyone wants a revolution, find something more viable, not less!
And here is a hint. Existing technologies would have replaced current technologies long ago, if they were more viable. Unless of course some idiots worked really hard to make them non-viable by political means.
And making things less viable is a DEVOLUTION!
Profiting by harming others and aggrandizing oneself for doing so.
>>Profiting by harming others and aggrandizing oneself for doing so<<
that is the plan, right Griff?
G’day James
“Once upon a time, oil from whales was valuable…”
Not all that long ago. Tangalooma, Queensland, originally a whaling station – it operated into the 1960’s.
There were two radio ‘personalities’, Jack Davy and Bob Dyer, who had an ongoing competition to see who could catch the largest shark in the waters off the station.
A couple of days ago the Sydney Morning Herald reported a significant increase in the number of humpback whales off the coast.
Can you imagine the ‘stink’ that the “leave it in the ground” mob would make if we went back to whaling?
Well, whale oil is, of course, a biofuel.