A new way to make steel could cut 5% of CO2 emissions at a stroke

Re:A new way to make steel could cut 5% of CO2 emissions at ... by hexane360 on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @03:04AM (#18389197)

Actually it's 100% the opposite.

Look at your iron-carbon phase diagram: https://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/kap_9/illustr/fe_...

Cast iron contains a high concentration of carbon, which makes it brittle. To make steel you need a heavy oxidizer to extract the (reduced) carbon. This is usually done using a "basic oxygen furnace", which is basically injecting a high pressure, very high velocity stream of oxygen into the metal to game thermodynamics into combusting the carbon without combusting the iron.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A new way to make steel could cut 5% of CO2 emissions at ... by foobarian on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @09:20AM (#18391170)

Wow, TIL. This has some details at "5 year old level:" https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-iron-an...

The phase diagram is very interesting too. Very little carbon is needed to go from elemental iron to steel, looks like about 0.008%. Thanks for posting that!

[ Parent | on HN ]