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Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel

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Re: Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel

#51

Post by ClumsyPilot »

rainbowzootsuit wrote: post #22
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, I struggle to see any situation, barring mismanagement or disaster, where you should be shipping tankers full of hydrogen byproducts like ammonia and losing most of the energy in the process. We are currently importing all the natural gas in Europe, and both the price and carbon footrpint are more than double of what pipeline delivered from Russia. You could build a pipeline from the middle east to Europe fo…

Hydrogen, being so small, penetrates directly through the molecular structure of steel and in the process causes embrittlement of the steel. Is a long distance H2 pipeline a solved problem using alternate materials?

I believe plastic pipes?

Re: Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel

#53

Post by cyberax »

1letterunixname wrote: post #38
cyberax wrote: post #33

I don't get it. Why not just use methane? It can be synthesized easily, we already have infrastructure to ship it around the world (just ask Putin for his opinion on that), and it's much less hazardous than ammonia. Moreover, it doesn't require plants to switch to green methane right away. It can be done gradually and in a distributed fashion.

Drilling for methane adds GHGs to climate change. For DRI, use a solar power tower to directly heat ore with "syngas" made similarly with solar heating and a renewable carbon source. Such a setup can approach closed-loop production and emissions capture.

Sure. But we also can synthesize methane from captured carbon dioxide and green hydrogen. It's still more expensive than fossil methane, but it's getting cheaper.

But we can start transitioning factories to use methane right now, starting from fossil methane and slowly moving to greener sources.

Re: Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel

#54

Post by 1letterunixname »

cyberax wrote: post #53
1letterunixname wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drilling for methane adds GHGs to climate change. For DRI, use a solar power tower to directly heat ore with "syngas" made similarly with solar heating and a renewable carbon source. Such a setup can approach closed-loop production and emissions capture.

Sure. But we also can synthesize methane from captured carbon dioxide and green hydrogen. It's still more expensive than fossil methane, but it's getting cheaper. But we can start transitioning factories to use methane right now, starting from fossil methane and slowly moving to greener sources.

You're suggesting unworkable processes that would take an absolute crapton of energy and be very expense.

Re: Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel

#55

Post by lazide »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #39
boshomi wrote: post #18

Reduction of iron ore with carbon monoxid in closed loop: • Decarbonisation of BF-BOF through thermochemical closed carbon looping. • Demonstration of mass and energy flows of thermochemical BF-BOF system. • 88% emissions reduction of UK steel industry through £720 million investment. • Decarbonisation without retiring of existing BF-BOF, reducing stranded assets. • After 5 years, £1.28 billion savings and total UK-w…

The UK steel industry is 0.1% of the UK economy, at around 7 million tonnes per annum. China producuces a little over 1 billion metric tonnes per annum By what measure is this not futile?

If the technology is developed and proven in a smaller economy, then it can be expanded to the bigger one by said smaller economy.

Re: Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel

#56

Post by lazide »

senectus1 wrote: post #47
photochemsyn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more rational to ship the hydrogen as methane, rather than ammonia. The energetics are comparable IIRC (Sabatier for methane, Haber-Bosch for ammonia, but it's more or less the same kind of high-pressure moderate-temp chemistry pipeline). Methane from CO2 + H2 vs. ammonia from N2 + H2, it's just that the latter technology has seen more research and investment.

The ammonia has a purpose on its own, as fertilizer. The nitrogen used to make it, is also freely pulled from the atmosphere

It’s also great for making explosives.

What?

Re: Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel

#57

Post by senectus1 »

kokanee wrote: post #45
iamerroragent wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From article: " Currently, ammonia is synthesized through the Haber–Bosch process by converting hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia. In this process, hydrogen is mainly produced via steam methane reforming. This fact makes the process of fossil-fuel-based ammonia synthesis very carbon dioxide intensive, accounting for ≈1% of the global carbon dioxide emissions.[11, 16] Yet more sustainable ammonia synthesis pathways a…

I work at a company that is creating better electrolyzers for this process. Ammonia producers are clamoring for this technology. It works, and it is happening!

same :-)

This is not just for green steel, it's largely used for fertilizer and some other industrial purposes. Making it green is going to be big business!

Re: Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel

#58

Post by 8note »

cyberax wrote: post #33

I don't get it. Why not just use methane? It can be synthesized easily, we already have infrastructure to ship it around the world (just ask Putin for his opinion on that), and it's much less hazardous than ammonia. Moreover, it doesn't require plants to switch to green methane right away. It can be done gradually and in a distributed fashion.

It's not particularly unlikely that we'll have to tear down or repurpose all that methane transportation infrastructure once we prioritize that global warming caused by leaks in that infrastructure.

Transporting ammonia doesn't have the leaks-make-global-warming problem

Re: Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel

#59

Post by kumarski »

"every MWh of renewable electricity put onto the grid would displace ~3MWh of fossil fuels being burned to supply grid electricity and eliminate over a tonne of CO2 emissions." - https://johnmenadue.com/the-green-hydrogen-myth/

Electric arc furnaces are rife with issues.

All the ESG "let's minimize CO2 emissions" stuff had me going long levered on nat gas.

https://bit.ly/kumarngbull

Have a look at $UAN, $FCG, and $TELL(Gamble) -- I went long levered in 2019 onwards.

If I have to watch the train wreck, I deserve to be compensated accordingly.

Steel data: https://twitter.com/datarade/status/1642716122343526400?s=20

To those who doubt my line of thinking:

Is there as ingle commercial steel plant that minimizes iron ores via hydrogen? Furthermore, we know that most of the hydrogen is produced by nat gas reformation.

To make zero carbon iron you'd have to do mass scale electrolysis and it would need to be powered by renewables, right?

https://www.industrytransition.org/green-steel-tracker/ - here's some 50+ green steel projects tracked, I check it periodically.

Cheers.

I do believe electric arc furnaces will get ESG ayatollah money and will scale over time even if counterproductive to basic scientific production metrics against feedstock requirements, throughput, quality, and industrial requirements.

Re: Reducing Iron Oxide with Ammonia: A Sustainable Path to Green Steel

#60

Post by shard972 »

lazide wrote: post #55
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK steel industry is 0.1% of the UK economy, at around 7 million tonnes per annum. China producuces a little over 1 billion metric tonnes per annum By what measure is this not futile?

If the technology is developed and proven in a smaller economy, then it can be expanded to the bigger one by said smaller economy.

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