One order of steel; hold the greenhouse gases

Image source - http://www.petrodrillingtools.com/factory.asp?bigclassname=factory&smallclassname=Steel-making

Stepping into a steel mill is like walking into the gates of hell. I can't possibly describe my feelings when I toured the Nucor plant in Tuscaloosa, AL this summer any more clearly.

I don't mean to say that the plant tour was bad or unpleasant, it was far from those. Instead, it was one of the most fascinating industrial settings that I have ever, ever seen. Instead, the heat and fire and sparks and glowing light could only be analogous to our cultural images of eternal damnation in hellfire.

...and it's apparently bad for our environment, something else I got to see in Provo, Utah, when I saw the remnants of Geneva Steel, a cleanup that has been ongoing for more than twenty years.

But I digress...

Today's article - from the MIT website - reports on a paper in the journal Nature titled "A new anode material for oxygen evolution in molten oxide electrolysis". The paper describes a new process of steel making that promises to produce higher quality steel at a cheaper cost and with less carbon dioxide production. Instead of using a carbon to chemically reduce iron ore (producing carbon dioxide as greenhouse-effect-worsening byproduct), the described process initially used an iridium anode but finally settled on a chromium/iron alloy which is, according to researcher Donald Sadoway, is "abundant and cheap."

The connections to our summer workshop are all over the place...

• oxidation happening more quickly at high temperatures ("about 1600 degrees Celsius")
• chemical reduction via the activity series (carbon used to reduce iron oxides)
• electrolytic reduction at the anode
• protective oxide coatings (like aluminum's) on the iron/chromium alloy anode
• ceramics and some metals having much higher melting points than others
• interdisciplinary approach to science ("Electrochemistry is a multidisciplinary problem, involving chemical, electrical[,] and materials engineering.")

It's a great read.