By extracting metallic iron without producing carbon dioxide, the new process could even be carbon negative, at least for part of the world’s iron production
Making iron, the main ingredient of steel, takes a toll on Earth’s delicate atmosphere, producing 8% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a team of chemists has come up with a way to make the business much more eco-friendly.
Iron is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, but in its natural state is bound to oxygen in the various minerals that make up iron ore. To extract metallic iron from this ore, workers typically mix it with a high-carbon form of coal called coke and heat the combination to about 1500°C in a blast furnace. At that temperature, the carbon atoms strip the oxygen atoms from the iron, producing COthat wafts into the atmosphere and leaves behind the molten metal.
To that end, Paul Kempler, a chemical engineer at the University of Oregon, and colleagues wondered whether an industrial process for making chlorine from saltwater could be repurposed for ironmaking. In this “chlor-alkali” process, water containing sodium-chloride is placed in an electrochemical cell resembling a battery that contains two electrodes submerged in a liquid electrolyte.
To tweak the setup to purify iron, Kempler’s team added iron oxide particles to its cathode. Now, the electrons sent to it would also release the oxygen atoms from iron oxide and again form sodium hydroxide—as well as leave behind solid metallic iron. The process is highly efficient, the researchers claim.
Kempler says both concerns are valid. Even so, scaling production to match industrial chlorine gas needs would still produce tens of millions of tons of CO-free iron and chlorine annually, he notes. As for the purification of iron oxide, he adds that because sodium hydroxide is well known to bind to trace impurities in iron ore, some of it can be used to purify the iron oxide prior to use in the reactor, a project they are currently testing.
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