Iron fuel shows its mettle • Hacker News Board

Re: Iron fuel shows its mettle

#101

Post by elil17 » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

Tade0 wrote: post #50

> “Places that have excess energy could make iron, and others can buy it. This way, you could commodify renewable energy so it can be globally distributed without the need for transmission lines. Metals can solve a big problem in the renewable energy transition: long-duration energy storage.” My gut feeling is that transmission lines would still be cheaper. That being said long-term storage seems to be the value prop…

Transmission is expensive if you're running a line to somewhere without a lot of demand. Something like this could be a relevant solution for anything in remote locations.

Re: Iron fuel shows its mettle

#102

Post by chewbacha » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

howlin wrote: post #100

I don't really understand why iron is being considered over aluminum. Is aluminum production from ore too complex compared to iron? I would have to imagine burning metallic aluminum produces much more energy per gram.

My gut is to assume that aluminum isn't as viable because it does _not_ oxidize as readily as iron does.

Re: Iron fuel shows its mettle

#103

Post by euroderf » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

fnordpiglet wrote: post #74

Tade0 wrote: post #50

> “Places that have excess energy could make iron, and others can buy it. This way, you could commodify renewable energy so it can be globally distributed without the need for transmission lines. Metals can solve a big problem in the renewable energy transition: long-duration energy storage.” My gut feeling is that transmission lines would still be cheaper. That being said long-term storage seems to be the value prop…

Iceland has absurd amounts of spare energy. So they bring in ships full of bauxite and refine it into aluminum blocks then load it back on the ship. Aluminum is refined by electrolysis, so it’s a perfect way to export their excess electricity. That’s stocking btw that it takes 4 tons of coal per year per house. That’s an absurd amount.

I'm a serious PITA about recycling aluminum. I have this mental image of vast quantities of bauxite and energy being tossed out whenever an aluminum container (or bit of foil) is not recycled. But I don't have any firm numbers.

Re: Iron fuel shows its mettle

#104

Post by thescriptkiddie » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

> Iron oxide can also be reduced to iron using hydrogen

> Altiro gets around this problem by adding a little natural gas

This is transparently just green washing from the fossil fuel industry. There is no way that this will be an efficient energy storage mechanism and it definitely won't be carbon neutral. Developing cost-effective methods to produce steel from iron ore without the use of coke (coal) is important, but if you want to do that just do that.

Re: Iron fuel shows its mettle

#105

Post by samus » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 5:59 PM UTC

rsaesha wrote: post #79

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It needs to prove that it can be competitive with the other methods. I think the one thing is that iron storage would be a potential long term form of storage, while all those other methods that you mentioned are really short term, designed primarily just to deal with the daily peaks and troughs of renewable production, but not as much the "it's been completely overcast for 3 weeks" problem. The only other form of…

If using Fe why not iron batteries? Keep the redox, remove the energy from the system via eletrical current instead of low efficiency heat, boiler and steam engine combo.

There are also applications where the desired output is heat, not electricity. In that case, iron fuel would be useful.

Re: Iron fuel shows its mettle

#106

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 6:01 PM UTC

OrbitalPewPew wrote: post #19

Imagine thinking that a material stars can't use for fuel is one that makes sense as a "renewable energy source." These idiots need to go back and take undergraduate thermodynamics.

Skipping class to play with thermite was, in retrospect, an educationally sound decision.

Re: Iron fuel shows its mettle

#107

Post by cyberax » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 6:01 PM UTC

unwind wrote: post #92

jokoon wrote: post #91

At that rate, there should be an encyclopedia dedicated to all projects that can be described as greenwashing. I think it's a new strategy to "drown the fish", by flooding the media with "green" technologies just to pretend to say "we heard you, we are going to change the world with green new things" only to save more time until everybody realize each of those new projects are just not viable. The air travel sector s…

Okay, but it would be more helpful if you provided some actual arguments against the technology.

It's another "use energy/hydrogen to create a fuel" technology.

This one creates a very inconvenient fuel: iron powder. It can't be efficiently piped, and it needs some very strange technology to make it burn in controlled conditions. And you cannot use it for gas turbines or piston-based engines.

At this point, if you have hydrogen, you can just use it to produce methane that has none of these problems. Or maybe ammonia if we ever get catalysts working at mild conditions.

Re: Iron fuel shows its mettle

#108

Post by photochemsyn » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

Seems like a niche technology, useful if you're sitting on tons of scrap iron for example. I recall some proposals for using this in long-distance cargo shipping instead of very dirty (and fossil-sourced) bunker fuel, but even there synthetic diesel or methane from atmospheric CO2 + water might be the more versatile solution (and the overall mass of the iron required for say, a trans-Pacific journey is an issue). See:

https://swzmaritime.nl/news/2020/02/27/why-iron-could-be-a-s...

> "A disadvantage of iron as a fuel for ships is the relatively high specific mass of iron powder and the increase in the weight of the iron oxide that is produced during combustion. As a result, a ship will lie deeper and deeper during the voyage."

They seem to have a prototype in the works c. 2030.

Re: Iron fuel shows its mettle

#109

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 6:07 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #76

There's an experiment in here where Theodore Gray "burns" iron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMJtieqVUc4 I hosted this. Getting permission from the Building department to have fire indoors was lotsa fun.

The lecture looks interesting, but if you want to skip to the burning stuff part: https://youtu.be/NMJtieqVUc4?t=2587

I learned that stainless steel burns the hard way. You can use stainless steel scrubby pads as a heat sink to vaporize DMT in a contraption called "the machine". Naively, I thought steel wool would work instead of the scrubby pad. It doesn't. The fibers are too small and it ignites--pretty much exactly the opposite of what you want in a vape.

Re: Iron fuel shows its mettle

#110

Post by volkl48 » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #87

Sounds like one of the least efficient energy storage ideas I've heard in a long time, I wonder how this is getting funded? Hmm, let's check to see who is behind this...the founding professor https://www.tue.nl/en/research/researchers/philip-de-goey/ is a fellow/awardee of the Combustion Institute, gets funding from ERC, etc. OK, so I guess all that European taxpayer money won't spend itself, and if you have a hammer…

> Meanwhile, stationary class (i.e. relatively poor energy density) iron air batteries are making commercial progress. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/06/12/form-energy-to-deploy...

Also seems worth mentioning ESS. https://essinc.com/

They're a bit further along (scaling up from low-volume production, some installs in the wild) with a different approach to the use of iron (flow batteries).