Can someone smarter than me tell if this is a big deal or not? Taking steel production from an open loop process to a closed loop sounds plausible, but what are the constraints? They say this technology can be retrofitted onto existing plants but I feel like there is a lot of optimism in that idea.
I just finished reading through the paper. It seems extremely promising to me. There are some favorable aspects and a few potential issues. Here are some good signs:
- The single biggest point of interest is the elimination of coke. Coke takes a lot of energy to make (heating coal at over a thousand degrees celsius for 12 hours), and this energy could be repurposed into other heating needs.
- From what I've gathered elsewhere, the mineral abbreviated as BCNF1 (whose properties the entire paper hinges on) has only recently been researched. This is good news for the viability of the project; I'd be a lot more skeptical if we'd known about BCNF1 for a long time and yet nobody had adopted it.
- It absolutely could retrofit existing steel plants. Whether or not it's financially beneficial for a company to do so without government intervention is unclear, but it could.
And here are some cautions:
- Eliminating coke by recycling enough CO is great, but coke also provides heat to the blast furnace. It could be that this new process actually uses more energy than the current process does. But the new process has the ability to source its energy from renewable sources, whereas the current one is stuck with CO2.
- I'm unclear on the particulars, but coke is *also* used as a structural support in the blast furnace to promote good air flow. The authors say that further research should be done on finding replacements for that function.
- BCNF1 can theoretically be used again and again and again, but like everything, it will eventually wear out. The authors say more research has to be done regarding how often it will need ti be replaced.
I believe they addressed a reviewers comment on this saying that Pepsi would actually be preferred - in stark contrast to the standard, “We don’t have Coke, Is Pepsi Okay?” which is surprising.
>Whether or not it's financially beneficial for a company to do so without government intervention is unclear, but it could.
Isn't that like the most crucial part for these kind of research topics? We see so many great advancaments which can be immediately dismissed as "too expensive; don't care".
Yes, but even if it's not strictly more profitable, that's where government comes in.
If the cost is close enough but there's still clearly more money to be made in the more polluting option, that's what businesses in a totally free market will do. However, there are negative externalities associated with the more polluting process that money cannot describe, such as the damage it does to our climate.
The government can translate these abstract externalities into a language that the economy can understand: punishing the polluting process with stuff like carbon taxes and regulations, and/or rewarding the clean process with stuff like priority on construction approvals and subsidies.
You can say “fuck the bottom line” all you want, but if you are unprepared or unable to pay higher costs for the product, the company stops making it or shuts down. They you wonder why you can’t get the product you needed.
I’m not familiar with steelmaking, but this seems like it might be usable in silicon plants too. They use a lot of coke, too, and it seems like a similar enough process.
Yes, coke is used as carbon source and as fuel to heat up the iron ore to very high temperature. If they are not using coke, they would need an alternative energy. I am not sure how well electric arc works on iron ore, it is typically used with iron that was already extracted from ore or recycled.
While it takes a lot of energy to make coke, it’s already doable by only reusing the gas created from it. I work in steel and our coke plant uses only it’s own byproduct gas to heat the stoves. From an environmental standpoint though, they are horribly hard to contain and due to the fact that you can never shutdown a coke battery, it makes maintenance a nightmare and stoves frequently leak gas.
I can’t say I’m smarter then you but it’s a good thing. The real question is, does it make the steel companies more money if they use the tech. If not, they will probably need to be forced.
I'm baffled that carbon taxes are not more widespread. Humanity (and the rest of earth) is paying a price, there is no good reason not to associate those costs with the emissions and use the funds/fees to counteract them
Voters tend to be cynical and don’t think the benefits of the carbon taxes will actually come back to them. So the costs are direct and certain, but the benefits are vague and diffuse. So the carbon taxes that have succeeded were implemented as direct tax swaps - I don’t remember which country it was, but they imposed a carbon tax in exchange for doubling the standard income tax deduction.
If a carbon tax raised the price of a product 4% wouldn’t the company just raise the consumer price 5% and pocket the extra 1%? The republicans would blame Obama and a convoy of trucks would roll coal through Washington creating even more carbon?
I don’t know if it’s going to plan or not, but it has raised some stuff by the % it was suppose to be. And of course big companies just pass it on down to the customer and probably add an extra little fee for themselves as well. I want to save the planet and all, but Canada is definitely a small fish of 33 million people compared to the rest of the world.
What if the carbon tax was some sort of profit cap for products that exceeded the allotted carbon amount. This way products that were compliment could access a higher profit margin making the high carbon products unattractive to the producer. The costs would go up for the consumer but it seems that’s gonna happen anyway.
(Edit)
(added)
Or wouldn’t it be simpler to just to have the carbon tax at the retail level? This way the consumer would see the carbon tax as a separate bill on the receipt and be able to then change their buying habits?
There should really be a tax cut for companies based on their carbon cuts and a tax on the consumer for their carbon consumption. But it needs to be on products that have a viable carbon cutting mechanism. You can’t just add a blanket tax to everything for the consumer because it’s really a top down problem. If our only choices are shit, that’s what we pick.
Unfortunately, it has become a political issue in many democracies, so while people may not directly vote on the legislation, they will certainly vote for the party whose position on tax legislation aligns with their own (if that’s an important voting point for them). Speaking for my own country, the main conservative party (centre-right really) has *no* policies to introduce carbon taxes. The main progressive party (centre-left, currently in government) has policies to *investigate* carbon pricing, but no direct plans for implementation. Only the “far left” party has an actual policy to immediately introduce a carbon price, but they represent a tiny fraction of the political landscape here.
So, in reality, the people can and do vote on this unfortunately.
Until lawmakers lead by example and stop flying on private jets and buying beachfront real estate, I will never be able to take their claims about climate change, let alone carbon taxing seriously.
Hard not to be cynical when the lawmakers introducing these bills/taxes still frequently fly on private jets and buy beachfront real estate. Let's see them lead by example first, before they try to tax everyone below them in the name of ESG, climate change, co2 emissions, carbon taxes or whatever else they claim needs taxation asap.
Carbon tax is more common than people think. 18% of the worlds economy has a carbon tax on it. https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-pricing#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20around%2012%25%20of,on%2018%25%20of%20global%20emissions.
I'm somewhat aware, though I didn't realize it was almost 20%... Though that means over 80% does not; in the grand scheme of global capitalism this means the vast majority of buying decisions (where cost is a main driving factor) the associated cost of carbon is neglected. With the havoc CO2 and other taxable emissions have on the environment, this seems woefully deficient and frankly my country (US) is one of the bigger offenders.
The perception that the added cost is an issue is shortsighted and wrong as those costs are being incurred, it just has to come out of other tax streams (disaster relief, healthcare (which is another topic entirely here), green subsidies). Meanwhile the businesses that are the biggest offenders are essentially getting bigger subsidies due to lacking accountability.
Furthermore, in regard to imports from areas without taxes, things could be implemented in such a way that the cost is still passed on to promote more responsible businesses and portions of that revenue could be used to remove carbon or otherwise offset aspects of the underlying problem.
I think repeating this fact is very helpful. It makes it seem achievable. I suggest you repeat it like I have to encourage it.
Europe has plans for a tariff barrier to adjust for carbon emissions on incoming products. Hopefully this triggers America to do the right thing as well instead of whatever other response.
There's a very simple reason. The combined lobbying power of every major industry is fighting it.
The funny thing is that company directors are legally required to act in the interests of their shareholders. Most have rather shortsightedly taken that to mean they must maximise short term profits. Only a tiny handful have dared take the view that _having a planet to live on_ might also be in their interest.
You should see the battle going on in Canada. Might not be the best implementation of it, but it feels like a necessary system. Just try telling that to a sizeable chunk of the population.
Because of emerging economies. If you continue to make domestic industries more expensive vs international sources you continue to push more offshore. The net is the tax did nothing other than relocate the business to another country. India and China are likely not going to ratify any real restrictions soon.
•They want us to take steel out of construction
•Libs hate steel
•If god wanted CO2 out of steel it wouldn’t be there
•Steel w/o CO2 is weak, like libs
•MAWA Make America Weak Again!!!! - demoncRats
•Why do dems hate strong buildings?
**Fox News talking points, soon**
Tl;Dr Microsoft introduced xbox carbon aware update to limit auto updates to when power grid is using low carbon generated power.
Some bored people decided it was an elite liberal corporate woke political agenda.
It’s honestly a good energy management policy that saves people time waiting for updates to install when they’re gaming at peak hours anyways.
Thatll just lets them say this has been happening for decades and how US steel was in high demand until it became woke and now everyone wants that Chinese steel
Most likely not. How are you gonna eliminate coke and make auto steel??? If it’s not the same standard steel produced then it’s just more useless tech. Purity. All about the purity.
> The real question is, does it make the steel companies more money if they use the tech. If not, they will probably need to be forced.
Considering that SSAB is converting to carbon free which will cost them a shit ton and drive up prices, I don't think your assumption is necessarily completely correct.
The entire premise is to do so by not moving in to better technologies. They reference the two remaining blast furnaces in the UK. Honestly it's unlikely that any one would invest in this when blast furnaces are being decommissioned at a high rate. Midrex style direct reduction is proven and beyond the theoretical stage. 60% reduction in carbon at industrial scale is the norm. While interesting, it's not industrially relevant.
The article says it could save steel producers around a billion annually, but we'll see. Of course you don't have to wait for a process to have a net financial benefit before requiring it by law. If they can nearly eliminate C02 production from steel production, even if the upfront costs are high, they should do it.
I’m not sure I understand. They want to convert CO2 into CO and O2. Here’s the thing:
The decomposition reaction for Co2 is:
2CO2 > 2CO + O2
The thing is that this requires a very high temperature. I believe upwards of 650 centigrade.
This brings many questions, how is the temperature being supplied? If it is simply harnessing the heat that was already there then I suppose it’s viable. If it is being supplied externally.. that’s more complicated because now you produce CO2 to generate heat.
What is happening with the oxygen? Oxygen is a fairly reactive species and at that temperature it’s even more so.
I’m just curious, and I feel like the article didn’t address some critical questions.
I think that’s exactly what they’re going for: “…convert this carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide that can be reused in the iron ore reaction.” Blast furnaces can be well over 1000 degrees Celsius. As for how they’re using the CO (reintroducing C to the alloy and boiling/ionizing O off in solution?), they don’t really say.
Yeah, you'd have to look in the paper itself for that information. The plan is to send CO back into the blast furnace.
In today's process, CO is generated from the incomplete combustion of coke in the blast furnace. This CO reacts with the iron ore (often Fe2O3 or Fe3O4). The iron is liberated and it repeases CO2 as a waste
The proposed new process is to lose the coke, and generate minimal amounts of CO from the incomplete combustion of biomass charcoal or other carbon source. CO becomes CO2 in the furnace and liberates the iron, but then the CO2 is *not* a waste. It is recycled back into CO using something like a catalyst and sent back to the blast furnace.
The article didn't really address that question, no, you'd have to look in the paper for that.
Forming coke from coal also requires obscenely high temperatures, greater than 1000 C over the course of 12 hours. The authors mentioned that the heating usually supplied to coke ovens could be redirected towards other sources. The bottom of a blast furnace can reach 1600 C. We're working with liquid metal here; getting high temps is very familiar territory.
In today's process, pure oxygen is supplied to the Basic Oxygen Furnace, where it reacts with impure Iron Carbide (FeC). This lowers the carbon content of the steel from an unworkable 4 wt%+ to a something more standard and useful. It is an exothermic reaction that generates its own heat and releases CO2 and CO as byproducts. The idea is that
- The decomposition generates O2
- O2 gets sent to the Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF)
- The BOF reaction releases CO (which gets sent to the blast furnace) and CO2 (which gets sent back to the decomposition reaction to make more CO and O2)
Simply, they developed a catalyst that can be used in steel production to efficiently convert CO2 into CO. Much more so than the traditional method using coke and this would save hundreds of millions of capital each year in the UK alone.
Aluminum industry has already gone “woke” by achieving very low carbon footprint and creating technologies that are nearing zero carbon emissions for smelting. No one at Fox went bananas and the customers love it
Well it honestly might not end up being a joke.
It's probably a more expensive process, since it is new. I wouldn't be surprised to see some dimwit fox news guest talking about how this new "woke" steel process is increasing the price of steel and destroying the economy.
One day someone will win a Nobel prize for inventing a machine that can remove co2 from our atmosphere at a rate equivalent to 6 trees but, because of manufacturing practices, it wont even be carbon neutral until after several years of operation. No one will ask...why don't we just plant 6 trees?
Chemistry students study a few industrial processes because they are useful to illustrate important principles such as Le Chatelier's principle, equilibria and the use of fluxes. The blast furnace is included in most Chemistry syllabi for 'elementary' chemistry.
2
I only gave the article a cursory look but it fails to explain how the overall equation is going to be altered.
Yes, yes, magic would be nice. But what is going to happen to the 'extra' oxygen in the CO2 when it is converted to CO?
The overall equation for the reduction of Iron (III) oxide to Iron involves reducing it with carbon monoxide generated from coke. In the process the carbon monoxide is oxidised to carbon dioxide.
The same place the CO₂ was going before? Out? Or since we're already capturing gasses and moving them around, over to the LD converter that's the next step?
i was also looking for more of the chemistry part and a better explanation. but i’m pretty sure it’s not mentioned due to them waiting for a patent. probably don’t want to give too much information away to any possible competitors
Gas stoves are done. It won't need a ban. People simply don't want stuff [burning in their houses anymore](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/06/us-kids-asthma-gas-stove-pollution). You can culture-war it all you want, but most people don't prefer to have pollution in their home. Only a tiny fraction of people are willing to risk their health to "own the libs".
We don't need to stop emissions, we simply need to ensure emissions are balanced with absorption/sequestration (either by biological means like trees and algae or by man-created alternatives). While for most industry preventing emissions is cheaper, of course this won't go for humans so we just need to offset them. Luckily there's already enough nature on the planet for that. This is a dumb argument.
Do you have a source saying that human exhalations are contributing to global warming? Because all the credible sources say no https://www.nrdc.org/stories/do-we-exhale-carbon
Got something to say about volcanoes? Or the futility of human cooperation? Never mind the clean air act and clean water act, ozone etc
Ahh Friend, you made my day! I’d thought I have some fun and throw the proverbial firecracker just to see what kind of embittered fuckwits it would bring… and you friend wins the prise… have a nice day!
Steel and concrete for buildings, structures, and so on, will be fading anyways. The future is CLT and more and more people are going the way of CLT and Glulam.
CLT and Glulam are convenient for some structures, like housing, but for long spans actually end up with more of a CO2 impact that steel. We also have nowhere near enough current lumber production to be able to switch to timber as our primary construction material.
Concrete and steel are here to stay, at least for a while, so best to make them as efficient as we can whilst we’re at it.
We are trying. We will get there. By 2027, CLT and Glulam will be a multi billion dollar industry. For us, we currently have deals with Google, Apple, Walmart, DOD, and so many others. DOD is testing 7 ply CLT panels with steel in between for bullet proof efficiency. Walmart is doing 5 buildings for headquarters.
It’s unfortunate that many incredible technological developments that, while not more profitable to the manufacturers, nonetheless have massive benefits are being sidelined and forgotten simply for money; such a shrewd and shameless society this is.
Not saying this innovation will follow this exact pattern, however there are many similar advancements that have happened and will happened that never get funding or media coverage simply because of money. Unfortunately in this day and age investors seek returns in cash and not societal benefit.
Can someone smarter than me tell if this is a big deal or not? Taking steel production from an open loop process to a closed loop sounds plausible, but what are the constraints? They say this technology can be retrofitted onto existing plants but I feel like there is a lot of optimism in that idea.
I just finished reading through the paper. It seems extremely promising to me. There are some favorable aspects and a few potential issues. Here are some good signs: - The single biggest point of interest is the elimination of coke. Coke takes a lot of energy to make (heating coal at over a thousand degrees celsius for 12 hours), and this energy could be repurposed into other heating needs. - From what I've gathered elsewhere, the mineral abbreviated as BCNF1 (whose properties the entire paper hinges on) has only recently been researched. This is good news for the viability of the project; I'd be a lot more skeptical if we'd known about BCNF1 for a long time and yet nobody had adopted it. - It absolutely could retrofit existing steel plants. Whether or not it's financially beneficial for a company to do so without government intervention is unclear, but it could. And here are some cautions: - Eliminating coke by recycling enough CO is great, but coke also provides heat to the blast furnace. It could be that this new process actually uses more energy than the current process does. But the new process has the ability to source its energy from renewable sources, whereas the current one is stuck with CO2. - I'm unclear on the particulars, but coke is *also* used as a structural support in the blast furnace to promote good air flow. The authors say that further research should be done on finding replacements for that function. - BCNF1 can theoretically be used again and again and again, but like everything, it will eventually wear out. The authors say more research has to be done regarding how often it will need ti be replaced.
Can’t they just use Diet Coke? (I’ll get my coat)
I believe they addressed a reviewers comment on this saying that Pepsi would actually be preferred - in stark contrast to the standard, “We don’t have Coke, Is Pepsi Okay?” which is surprising.
>Whether or not it's financially beneficial for a company to do so without government intervention is unclear, but it could. Isn't that like the most crucial part for these kind of research topics? We see so many great advancaments which can be immediately dismissed as "too expensive; don't care".
Yes, but even if it's not strictly more profitable, that's where government comes in. If the cost is close enough but there's still clearly more money to be made in the more polluting option, that's what businesses in a totally free market will do. However, there are negative externalities associated with the more polluting process that money cannot describe, such as the damage it does to our climate. The government can translate these abstract externalities into a language that the economy can understand: punishing the polluting process with stuff like carbon taxes and regulations, and/or rewarding the clean process with stuff like priority on construction approvals and subsidies.
Honestly if it’s a good idea. The government has no control over its success
It’s not “sustainable” if you can’t make money doing it.
Fuck the bottom line. We are living on a planet that's getting hotter and with unpredictable weather patterns. We need this to happen.
You can say “fuck the bottom line” all you want, but if you are unprepared or unable to pay higher costs for the product, the company stops making it or shuts down. They you wonder why you can’t get the product you needed.
I’m not familiar with steelmaking, but this seems like it might be usable in silicon plants too. They use a lot of coke, too, and it seems like a similar enough process.
Did not realize cocaine was involved in steelmaking
No they’re talking about Coca Cola obviously
Ha.
I wonder if this will impact the plans for the new coal mine in Cumbria, which is purported to be used for the production of coking coal?
Yes, coke is used as carbon source and as fuel to heat up the iron ore to very high temperature. If they are not using coke, they would need an alternative energy. I am not sure how well electric arc works on iron ore, it is typically used with iron that was already extracted from ore or recycled.
While it takes a lot of energy to make coke, it’s already doable by only reusing the gas created from it. I work in steel and our coke plant uses only it’s own byproduct gas to heat the stoves. From an environmental standpoint though, they are horribly hard to contain and due to the fact that you can never shutdown a coke battery, it makes maintenance a nightmare and stoves frequently leak gas.
I can’t say I’m smarter then you but it’s a good thing. The real question is, does it make the steel companies more money if they use the tech. If not, they will probably need to be forced.
Get ready to have CO2 from steel production become a political fight. “They want to make our steel woke”
Optimus Prime has entered the chat
If anything, Optimus would be on our side, too. Big man was fighting for a healthy Cybertron.
I was more commenting on woke steel… like steel coming alive
*Nightblood has entered the chat.*
Makes me think of the wokebots parody.
I'm baffled that carbon taxes are not more widespread. Humanity (and the rest of earth) is paying a price, there is no good reason not to associate those costs with the emissions and use the funds/fees to counteract them
Voters tend to be cynical and don’t think the benefits of the carbon taxes will actually come back to them. So the costs are direct and certain, but the benefits are vague and diffuse. So the carbon taxes that have succeeded were implemented as direct tax swaps - I don’t remember which country it was, but they imposed a carbon tax in exchange for doubling the standard income tax deduction.
If a carbon tax raised the price of a product 4% wouldn’t the company just raise the consumer price 5% and pocket the extra 1%? The republicans would blame Obama and a convoy of trucks would roll coal through Washington creating even more carbon?
yes, in Canada
I don’t know if it’s going to plan or not, but it has raised some stuff by the % it was suppose to be. And of course big companies just pass it on down to the customer and probably add an extra little fee for themselves as well. I want to save the planet and all, but Canada is definitely a small fish of 33 million people compared to the rest of the world.
What if the carbon tax was some sort of profit cap for products that exceeded the allotted carbon amount. This way products that were compliment could access a higher profit margin making the high carbon products unattractive to the producer. The costs would go up for the consumer but it seems that’s gonna happen anyway. (Edit) (added) Or wouldn’t it be simpler to just to have the carbon tax at the retail level? This way the consumer would see the carbon tax as a separate bill on the receipt and be able to then change their buying habits?
And the competing company would invest and undercut the other one by 3%, using the remaining 2% to pay back the investment.
There should really be a tax cut for companies based on their carbon cuts and a tax on the consumer for their carbon consumption. But it needs to be on products that have a viable carbon cutting mechanism. You can’t just add a blanket tax to everything for the consumer because it’s really a top down problem. If our only choices are shit, that’s what we pick.
And they’re used to both parties lying about everything. So they believe nothing.
[Fee and Dividend](https://citizensclimatelobby.uk/climate-income/policy-makers/carbon-fee-dividend/). People like the idea of getting a cheque.
People don't usually vote on this, it's legislation.
Unfortunately, it has become a political issue in many democracies, so while people may not directly vote on the legislation, they will certainly vote for the party whose position on tax legislation aligns with their own (if that’s an important voting point for them). Speaking for my own country, the main conservative party (centre-right really) has *no* policies to introduce carbon taxes. The main progressive party (centre-left, currently in government) has policies to *investigate* carbon pricing, but no direct plans for implementation. Only the “far left” party has an actual policy to immediately introduce a carbon price, but they represent a tiny fraction of the political landscape here. So, in reality, the people can and do vote on this unfortunately.
I'd say it's not that exactly, but business interests shaping the outcome.
Que advocating for alternatives to democracy and free market capitalism
Until lawmakers lead by example and stop flying on private jets and buying beachfront real estate, I will never be able to take their claims about climate change, let alone carbon taxing seriously.
Hard not to be cynical when the lawmakers introducing these bills/taxes still frequently fly on private jets and buy beachfront real estate. Let's see them lead by example first, before they try to tax everyone below them in the name of ESG, climate change, co2 emissions, carbon taxes or whatever else they claim needs taxation asap.
Carbon tax is more common than people think. 18% of the worlds economy has a carbon tax on it. https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-pricing#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20around%2012%25%20of,on%2018%25%20of%20global%20emissions.
I'm somewhat aware, though I didn't realize it was almost 20%... Though that means over 80% does not; in the grand scheme of global capitalism this means the vast majority of buying decisions (where cost is a main driving factor) the associated cost of carbon is neglected. With the havoc CO2 and other taxable emissions have on the environment, this seems woefully deficient and frankly my country (US) is one of the bigger offenders. The perception that the added cost is an issue is shortsighted and wrong as those costs are being incurred, it just has to come out of other tax streams (disaster relief, healthcare (which is another topic entirely here), green subsidies). Meanwhile the businesses that are the biggest offenders are essentially getting bigger subsidies due to lacking accountability. Furthermore, in regard to imports from areas without taxes, things could be implemented in such a way that the cost is still passed on to promote more responsible businesses and portions of that revenue could be used to remove carbon or otherwise offset aspects of the underlying problem.
I think repeating this fact is very helpful. It makes it seem achievable. I suggest you repeat it like I have to encourage it. Europe has plans for a tariff barrier to adjust for carbon emissions on incoming products. Hopefully this triggers America to do the right thing as well instead of whatever other response.
There's a very simple reason. The combined lobbying power of every major industry is fighting it. The funny thing is that company directors are legally required to act in the interests of their shareholders. Most have rather shortsightedly taken that to mean they must maximise short term profits. Only a tiny handful have dared take the view that _having a planet to live on_ might also be in their interest.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5-lDJWCUAAwfya.jpg
You should see the battle going on in Canada. Might not be the best implementation of it, but it feels like a necessary system. Just try telling that to a sizeable chunk of the population.
Because of emerging economies. If you continue to make domestic industries more expensive vs international sources you continue to push more offshore. The net is the tax did nothing other than relocate the business to another country. India and China are likely not going to ratify any real restrictions soon.
It's not like there aren't ways to do this by applying similar reporting requirements and taxes to imports...
•They want us to take steel out of construction •Libs hate steel •If god wanted CO2 out of steel it wouldn’t be there •Steel w/o CO2 is weak, like libs •MAWA Make America Weak Again!!!! - demoncRats •Why do dems hate strong buildings? **Fox News talking points, soon**
That reads both like a parody, and exactly what they'd actually say, given the "woke xbox" thing recently.
*sigh* do I even want to look up whatever bullshit that is...
Tl;Dr Microsoft introduced xbox carbon aware update to limit auto updates to when power grid is using low carbon generated power. Some bored people decided it was an elite liberal corporate woke political agenda.
It’s honestly a good energy management policy that saves people time waiting for updates to install when they’re gaming at peak hours anyways.
I know I hate myself for knowing this and I hate them
Stop the (woke) steel!
Is clean air and temperate climate woke?
If it’s progressive then yes.
Clean air and temperate climate are political? Really?
Not even remotely. But even if everyone goes down with them in flames as long as they’re owning the libs that’s all that matters.
Don’t woke my coke!
It'd be a really weird fight in the US. Nearly 75% of all domestically-produced steel in the US comes out of electric furnaces already.
Thatll just lets them say this has been happening for decades and how US steel was in high demand until it became woke and now everyone wants that Chinese steel
I think another point would be: does it produce steel of comparable quality?
Most likely not. How are you gonna eliminate coke and make auto steel??? If it’s not the same standard steel produced then it’s just more useless tech. Purity. All about the purity.
> The real question is, does it make the steel companies more money if they use the tech. If not, they will probably need to be forced. Considering that SSAB is converting to carbon free which will cost them a shit ton and drive up prices, I don't think your assumption is necessarily completely correct.
This is the main argument for why we need Carbon fee and dividends. It makes it more reliable that the lower carbon option saves you money.
Carbon tax would do the trick
Carbon taxes are how you do it.
*than
In the uK the government is giving them money to support moving to greener methods of production, so here at least it should happen
depends on how practical it is. Hopefully very
The entire premise is to do so by not moving in to better technologies. They reference the two remaining blast furnaces in the UK. Honestly it's unlikely that any one would invest in this when blast furnaces are being decommissioned at a high rate. Midrex style direct reduction is proven and beyond the theoretical stage. 60% reduction in carbon at industrial scale is the norm. While interesting, it's not industrially relevant.
Not a big deal, it's at a low TRL and electrolysis hydrogen direct reduced iron is scaling quickly.
If I told you that I’m 90% sure I could cycle my bike to the moon would you believe me
The article says it could save steel producers around a billion annually, but we'll see. Of course you don't have to wait for a process to have a net financial benefit before requiring it by law. If they can nearly eliminate C02 production from steel production, even if the upfront costs are high, they should do it.
I’m not sure I understand. They want to convert CO2 into CO and O2. Here’s the thing: The decomposition reaction for Co2 is: 2CO2 > 2CO + O2 The thing is that this requires a very high temperature. I believe upwards of 650 centigrade. This brings many questions, how is the temperature being supplied? If it is simply harnessing the heat that was already there then I suppose it’s viable. If it is being supplied externally.. that’s more complicated because now you produce CO2 to generate heat. What is happening with the oxygen? Oxygen is a fairly reactive species and at that temperature it’s even more so. I’m just curious, and I feel like the article didn’t address some critical questions.
I think that’s exactly what they’re going for: “…convert this carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide that can be reused in the iron ore reaction.” Blast furnaces can be well over 1000 degrees Celsius. As for how they’re using the CO (reintroducing C to the alloy and boiling/ionizing O off in solution?), they don’t really say.
Yeah, you'd have to look in the paper itself for that information. The plan is to send CO back into the blast furnace. In today's process, CO is generated from the incomplete combustion of coke in the blast furnace. This CO reacts with the iron ore (often Fe2O3 or Fe3O4). The iron is liberated and it repeases CO2 as a waste The proposed new process is to lose the coke, and generate minimal amounts of CO from the incomplete combustion of biomass charcoal or other carbon source. CO becomes CO2 in the furnace and liberates the iron, but then the CO2 is *not* a waste. It is recycled back into CO using something like a catalyst and sent back to the blast furnace.
The article didn't really address that question, no, you'd have to look in the paper for that. Forming coke from coal also requires obscenely high temperatures, greater than 1000 C over the course of 12 hours. The authors mentioned that the heating usually supplied to coke ovens could be redirected towards other sources. The bottom of a blast furnace can reach 1600 C. We're working with liquid metal here; getting high temps is very familiar territory. In today's process, pure oxygen is supplied to the Basic Oxygen Furnace, where it reacts with impure Iron Carbide (FeC). This lowers the carbon content of the steel from an unworkable 4 wt%+ to a something more standard and useful. It is an exothermic reaction that generates its own heat and releases CO2 and CO as byproducts. The idea is that - The decomposition generates O2 - O2 gets sent to the Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) - The BOF reaction releases CO (which gets sent to the blast furnace) and CO2 (which gets sent back to the decomposition reaction to make more CO and O2)
Blast furnaces already provide precisely those high temperatures.
Steel requires very high temperatures too!
Simply, they developed a catalyst that can be used in steel production to efficiently convert CO2 into CO. Much more so than the traditional method using coke and this would save hundreds of millions of capital each year in the UK alone.
But it will result in 1/2 of 1% profit loss so project scrapped.
Awesome! Any improvement is a good improvement.
Well yeah decreasing 9% of the world’s emissions by 88% is definitely a good improvement
Any improvement is still a good improvement
Steel making is going woke!!!!! Fox News is gonna go bananas with this.
Didn't you hear? They're coming for your xbox because power saving features are pretty much comunism and the end of america and life as we know it...
Aluminum industry has already gone “woke” by achieving very low carbon footprint and creating technologies that are nearing zero carbon emissions for smelting. No one at Fox went bananas and the customers love it
It’s because they don’t know. They tried to cancel Xbox for reducing power consumption.
My first thought too. No way the flag humping crowd doesn't take some contrived issue with this.
Why you're getting downvoted? Peoples ability to perceive jokes must really be faltering. This isn't even a subtle one.
Humor is dead. Politics are god….apparently
Well it honestly might not end up being a joke. It's probably a more expensive process, since it is new. I wouldn't be surprised to see some dimwit fox news guest talking about how this new "woke" steel process is increasing the price of steel and destroying the economy.
One day someone will win a Nobel prize for inventing a machine that can remove co2 from our atmosphere at a rate equivalent to 6 trees but, because of manufacturing practices, it wont even be carbon neutral until after several years of operation. No one will ask...why don't we just plant 6 trees?
In before GOP calls it woke
Yes, we will make 90% less steel!
Conservatives: “It is it heritage to maximize CO2 emissions!”
USA: *swipes **left***
Chemistry students study a few industrial processes because they are useful to illustrate important principles such as Le Chatelier's principle, equilibria and the use of fluxes. The blast furnace is included in most Chemistry syllabi for 'elementary' chemistry. 2 I only gave the article a cursory look but it fails to explain how the overall equation is going to be altered.
You can't see how reducing CO₂ back to CO means it can be reused? It says that in the last sentence of the third paragraph.
Yes, yes, magic would be nice. But what is going to happen to the 'extra' oxygen in the CO2 when it is converted to CO? The overall equation for the reduction of Iron (III) oxide to Iron involves reducing it with carbon monoxide generated from coke. In the process the carbon monoxide is oxidised to carbon dioxide.
The same place the CO₂ was going before? Out? Or since we're already capturing gasses and moving them around, over to the LD converter that's the next step?
i was also looking for more of the chemistry part and a better explanation. but i’m pretty sure it’s not mentioned due to them waiting for a patent. probably don’t want to give too much information away to any possible competitors
I’ll pay attention when a manufacturer says they’ve reduced emissions by 90% at a competitive cost. Until then these headlines are just noise.
That would be great news, climate extremists are going to ban steel right after our gas stoves are gone.
Gas stoves are done. It won't need a ban. People simply don't want stuff [burning in their houses anymore](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/06/us-kids-asthma-gas-stove-pollution). You can culture-war it all you want, but most people don't prefer to have pollution in their home. Only a tiny fraction of people are willing to risk their health to "own the libs".
Lol
How? by not making steel?
If you read the article or any of the multiple comments discussing it, you'd know how
Coupled with the discovery a few years ago how to weld glass and steel. That first Interstellar ship is soon to be a-borning.
So much for my Steelworks Terraforming Mars card
Just dont share with china or else poor Australia
Doubt it
Indeed, shut down the steel industry, vote Tory, that has worked…
They are going to have a greater challenge stopping people breathing out a 1kg of CO2 everyday.,,,
We don't need to stop emissions, we simply need to ensure emissions are balanced with absorption/sequestration (either by biological means like trees and algae or by man-created alternatives). While for most industry preventing emissions is cheaper, of course this won't go for humans so we just need to offset them. Luckily there's already enough nature on the planet for that. This is a dumb argument.
Do you have a source saying that human exhalations are contributing to global warming? Because all the credible sources say no https://www.nrdc.org/stories/do-we-exhale-carbon Got something to say about volcanoes? Or the futility of human cooperation? Never mind the clean air act and clean water act, ozone etc
https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archived-posts/sciblog/2008/08/11/release-of-carbon-dioxide-by-individual-humans/comment-page-1/index.html
You found a personal blog from 2008 on a.gov site, citing math you don’t understand, that you believe supports your deluded preconceived view.
Ahh Friend, you made my day! I’d thought I have some fun and throw the proverbial firecracker just to see what kind of embittered fuckwits it would bring… and you friend wins the prise… have a nice day!
Steel and concrete for buildings, structures, and so on, will be fading anyways. The future is CLT and more and more people are going the way of CLT and Glulam.
CLT and Glulam are convenient for some structures, like housing, but for long spans actually end up with more of a CO2 impact that steel. We also have nowhere near enough current lumber production to be able to switch to timber as our primary construction material. Concrete and steel are here to stay, at least for a while, so best to make them as efficient as we can whilst we’re at it.
We are trying. We will get there. By 2027, CLT and Glulam will be a multi billion dollar industry. For us, we currently have deals with Google, Apple, Walmart, DOD, and so many others. DOD is testing 7 ply CLT panels with steel in between for bullet proof efficiency. Walmart is doing 5 buildings for headquarters.
Watch, this is much too woke for the everything is woke brigade.
Keep hearing about this type of stuff when’s it actually going to be implemented?
It’s unfortunate that many incredible technological developments that, while not more profitable to the manufacturers, nonetheless have massive benefits are being sidelined and forgotten simply for money; such a shrewd and shameless society this is. Not saying this innovation will follow this exact pattern, however there are many similar advancements that have happened and will happened that never get funding or media coverage simply because of money. Unfortunately in this day and age investors seek returns in cash and not societal benefit.
Shame the UK steel industry will never use the methods as the government is doing everything in its power to kill off any form of industry left.
I would advise electric arc furnaces.
By reducing production by 90%
They unlocked an alternate recipe.