Hi, what are you looking for?
Electrify America Adds MEGA Battery Backup to Charging Stations
TAFE Queensland — Leaving A Better Planet For Future Generations
$1.2 Billion Gemini Solar+Storage Project To Use 100% CATL Batteries
Infraco Africa & Equatorial Power To Roll Out Access To Clean Power & Agri-Processing In The DRC & Rwanda
South Africa’s Eskom Signs Land Lease Agreements With Independent Clean Power Generators
US Interior Dept. Pokes Sleeping Offshore Wind Giant As Renewables Take Charge
Aeromine Rooftop Wind Technology Outperforms Solar (With Video)
TAFE Queensland — Leaving A Better Planet For Future Generations
Stealthy Green Steel Startup Cracks Lazy Iron Ore Code
Credit Suisse Predicts Renewable Energy That Is “Too Cheap To Meter” By 2025
Your Rechargeable Batteries Need Lithium. Geothermal Energy Could Soon Help. (Surprise Video)
On the Road to 100% Clean Electricity: 6 Potential Strategies To Break Through Last Few Percent
President William Ruto Sworn In, Reaffirms Kenya’s Commitment To Transition To 100% Clean Energy By 2030
New Lithium StoryMap & the Future of Electrification
Enhanced Geothermal Technology Cracks The 24/7 Energy Code
Akaysha Energy 850 MW/1680 MWh Battery Coming To New South Wales
Solaris Showed Off Two Buses, New Tools At Transexpo 2022
StoreDot’s Super Fast-Charging Batteries Pass Durability Benchmark
World Needs To Mine 25× More Lithium By 2050
Shyft Group Shows Off Its Blue Arc Electric Last Mile Delivery Vehicle To Customers
Shyft Group Shows Off Its Blue Arc Electric Last Mile Delivery Vehicle To Customers
Volvo EX90 Will Feature App-Based AC & DC Bi-Directional Charging
Want Energy Resilience? Invest Locally In Community Solar, Rooftop Solar, Heat Pumps, EVs
East Bay Customers Support California’s Grid During Extreme Heat Wave Through Innovative Program
NY Governor Hochul Announces Winner of 2022 New York–Israel Smart Energy Innovation Challenge
How The Inflation Reduction Act May Impact Heat Pump Standards
DIYers Have Been Quietly Building The Green Campers Of Tomorrow
Sexy/Unsexy, Practical/Impractical: Residential, Commercial, & Industrial Heat Is Serious Business
It Ain’t Easy: Affordable Electric RVing When The Family Wants American Luxury
Want Energy Resilience? Invest Locally In Community Solar, Rooftop Solar, Heat Pumps, EVs
Lower-Cost Tesla Will Outsell All Current Teslas Combined
Elon Musk Said In 2015 Tesla Could Be Worth $700 Billion In 2025 — Was 5 Years Early
The World According To Musk, Q3 2022
New Tesla Model Y Colors — Quicksilver & Midnight Cherry Red
OsloBuss Building New Charging Facility For Electric Buses
Renault Twingo ZE First Impressions — Good Looking Second Car
Month 1 With My Bolt EUV
Fully Electric Vehicles Reached ~6% Of Auto Sales In USA In 3rd Quarter
Electric Vehicle Journey In Hyundai Kona Electric Continues — Part 3
LiPOWER MARS-1000 Power Station Review
19% Of New Car Sales In Germany Fully Electric, 32% Have A Plug
16% Of New Cars Now Fully Electric In France!
US Auto Sales Down 21% vs. Q3 2019 — Tesla Up 169%
23% Of New Car Sales Now Electric In The Netherlands!
Tesla Model Y Germany’s Best Selling Vehicle in September, Beating Iconic VW Golf
Renault Twingo ZE First Impressions — Good Looking Second Car
Month 1 With My Bolt EUV
Fully Electric Vehicles Reached ~6% Of Auto Sales In USA In 3rd Quarter
Electric Vehicle Journey In Hyundai Kona Electric Continues — Part 3
LiPOWER MARS-1000 Power Station Review
Watch Tesla Conference Call Live Today — With Charts, Analyst Quotes, Transcribed Questions
Fisker Ocean — CleanTechnica Walkthrough Video
The Aptera Gamma — CleanTechnica Video Walkthrough
Mazda MX-30 EV vs. Tesla Model 3 — Ultimate EV Battle Bracket
Steel and cement both produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, but two new startups say they have a way to avoid most of it.
Every ton of steel produced using conventional methods creates 1.85 tons of carbon dioxide. The steel industry is responsible for nearly 8% of all global carbon emissions, according to McKinsey. Every ton of cement produced using conventional methods creates 1,800 pounds of carbon dioxide. The cement industry is also responsible for about 8% of global emissions, according to the BBC.
Compare those numbers to aviation, which accounts for about 2.5% of global carbon emissions and shipping at about 3% and it’s easy to see why decarbonizing steel and cement production is a priority if we hope to avoid the worst effects of an overheating planet.
Electra is a Colorado company that says it has found a way to make iron at 60º C — barely hot enough for a nice cup of tea — using intermittent renewable energy and low grade iron ore. The process of converting iron ore into iron is responsible for the vast majority — 90% — of the carbon emissions associated with making steel.
Speaking with Bloomberg Green last week, Electra co-founder Sandeep Nijhawan said he brought four business ideas, each addressing rising global temperatures, to a meeting in March of 2020 with an investor at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the climate solutions investment vehicle founded by Bill Gates. There were 7 slides in his pitch deck.
The first one was an idea about how to make iron without coal, intense heat, or emissions, powered only by renewable electricity. “Let me stop you right there,” BEV’s Dave Danielson told him. “If you could do this thing, then that’s what I would do. I don’t want to hear the next three ideas.”
Most iron is made by heating iron ore to 1400º C in a coal-fired furnace. The carbon in the coal combines with the oxygen in iron ore to separate out impurities and unwanted oxygen atoms, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide in the process. Later, the iron goes through a series of steps to be turned into steel, but the iron-creation step accounts for 90% of the greenhouse gas generated by the entire process. Producing iron at lukewarm temperatures and without coal would skip the most emissions-heavy step without relying on expensive technologies.
That’s why the idea caught Danielson’s attention. Affordable green steel is a big deal and could disrupt an industry that generates more than $870 billion in revenues each year. BEV invested $2.5 million to get Electra off the ground. To date, it has raised a total of $80 million to pursue its innovative process.
Other companies like Boston Metal are working to decarbonize steelmaking, but their process also involves very high temperatures and lots of energy. Once the process starts, it has to run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If it stops, the molten metal solidifies and it can take months to get the process started again.
Because the Electra process works at such a low temperature, it can stop and start at will. That allows it to use renewable energy when it is abundant — and cheap — and stop the process when needed until the next supply of renewable energy comes available.
Other startups are using hydrogen in place of coal but, Nijhawan says, since hydrogen made from renewable electricity is still more expensive than coal, companies are forced to use high grade iron ore, which is a scarce — and expensive — commodity. “The world is running out of high grade ores that are available for steelmaking,” he says, but low grade ore is abundant. In fact, there are billions of tons of it available.
A full size commercial Electra plant would be much smaller than a conventional steel mill, which is often so large that entire towns spring up around it. Electra will look to build plants that make only 300,000 tons of steel each year, a size that would allow the startup to place itself near existing electric arc furnaces. These furnaces take scrap steel and recycle it, and can also use the iron Electra produces and tweak the process to add more virgin iron than scrap steel.
Electra plants could be located close to iron ore mines, which are typically located far away from urban centers and near land where renewable power can be built without causing a lot of NIMBY related siting issues. The facilities could then process ore into iron onsite while getting rid of all impurities, drastically reducing the volume of material that needs to be transported to a steel plant and further lowering costs.
Electra is now exiting stealth mode and has declined to publicly divulge its exact process. However, it has shared enough details for independent experts to confirm that what the company claims to do is technologically feasible. It expects to begin producing low carbon steel by 2026, Bloomberg Green says.
Making cement by traditional means also involves high temperatures similar to those used to make iron, often obtained by burning coal. Chement, a startup based in Illinois, says it has invented a way of making cement at room temperature. While the chemistry is such that, even without burning coal, the process produces carbon dioxide, it does so as a pure gas. That way the costs of capture are only a small fraction compared to trapping those emissions from existing cement kilns.
“Day in and day out, we take materials and transform those materials,” says Venkat Viswanathan, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder of Chement. “Usually that transformation is done at high temperature with heat generated by fossil fuels. But now we can do that with electricity at low temperature.” The company envisions that most if not all the electricity it needs will come from renewable sources.
“Our technology gets rid of the highly-polluting coal fired kilns, using renewable electricity and the same raw materials to perform the chemical reaction with less energy and less CO2 emitted. Chement technology also enables carbon capture that is cheaper and easier than carbon capture in conventional cement production,” the company says.
Ordinarily, when the words “carbon capture” enter the conversation, we quickly stop reading. Most of the time it’s a scam organized by fossil fuel companies that goes like this — let us burn our oil and gas and coal now and we promise (pinky swear) we will figure out a way to capture the carbon we create later somewhere far down the road. We generally say no thank you to such blandishments.
That’s because most of it involves separating carbon dioxide from flue gases, which are composed of all sorts of nasty stuff. Removing the carbon dioxide is difficult and expensive. But if the Chement process results in only pure carbon dioxide, that is a far easier task and much cheaper. If what the company says is true, we are willing to give the idea a respectful listen.
“What’s super interesting about low temperature production is that it’s not just making the process green, it’s requiring less energy,” says Patricia Wexler, a consultant who helps startups scale up their ideas. These technologies are now “less of a scientific challenge, and more of an implementation challenge. If the momentum we have currently stays in place, which I believe it will because of geopolitical and institutional forces, then in five years we’ll start to see major commitments to redo the way we manufacture things,” Wexler tells Bloomberg Green.
Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Florida or anywhere else the Singularity may lead him. You can follow him on Twitter but not on any social media platforms run by evil overlords like Facebook.
#1 most loved electric vehicle, solar energy, and battery news & analysis site in the world. Support our work today!
Advertise with CleanTechnica to get your company in front of millions of monthly readers.
Green steel needs to overcome an iron ore supply chain bottleneck, and the startup Electra has a solution.
Inspired by Polynesian surfing history, the Kākau Go! a surfer's two-wheeled dream machine.
Both the Biden administration and Congress recognize the importance of investing big in a clean and globally competitive industrial manufacturing base. A cornerstone of...
RMI reveals product-level carbon accounting guidance, giving corporations and steel companies the power to accelerate decarbonization of a sector contributing ~7 percent of global...
Copyright © 2021 CleanTechnica. The content produced by this site is for entertainment purposes only. Opinions and comments published on this site may not be sanctioned by and do not necessarily represent the views of CleanTechnica, its owners, sponsors, affiliates, or subsidiaries.