Summary Draft 1: Green Steel

The article “How green steel made with electricity could clean up a dirty industry" by Casey Crownhart (2022) talks about how Boston’s Metal has made a new approach to manufacture emission-free steel, known as green steel, with a pilot reactor, in order to combat the rapidly rising carbon dioxide emissions that is currently produced by the steel industry. Boston Metal’s current challenge is to scale up their production, in order to keep up with the increasing demands in the industry, as steel is used in almost everything, from machinery to constructions. The two methods to produce green steel are known as molten oxide electrolysis (MOE) and direct reduction. A cell containing a mixture of dissolved iron oxides is used during the MOE process, which uses electricity to drive the removal of oxygen from steel, by heating up the cells up to about 1600°C, and is capable of processing low-grade iron ore. Whereas for direct reduction, carbon dioxide is released when natural gas reacts with solid iron ore, in order to yield iron, and hydrogen can be used in place of natural gas, where water vapour is emitted instead of carbon dioxide.