[Gasification] Gasification Digest, steel making

Fri Aug 15 00:10:48 CDT 2014

There are still blacksmiths using only charcoal from wood.  The iron  
business in England only switched over to Coal when the Royal Navy  
insisted on keeping a few trees handy, after Scotland had been clear- 
cut.  The problem is over quantity, not chemistry.

Bob Stuart

On 14-Aug-14, at 11:01 PM, Geoff Thomas wrote:

> ,
> On 15/08/2014, at 4:00 AM, gasification- 
> request at lists.bioenergylists.org wrote:
>
>> Today's Topics:
>
> Hi People, i had a question the other day about Coal being the only  
> way to make Steel, from my friend GeoffH,  i am putting the  
> question below, it is in two parts, and my answer below that, -  
> displaying my ignorance, - particularly if gasified waste would  
> reach the high temperature required, - I realise Charcoal does, and  
> also the aluminium reaction I mentioned, but am personally skating  
> on very thin ice re temperature.
>
> Please comment, I believe it is an important area of discussion in  
> the gasification arena, - PS,  I have a thick skin :)
>
> Cheers,
> Geoff Thomas.
>
>
>
> "Had a discussion with someone about the concept of 100% renewables  
> as to whether renewable could substitute for coal in steelmaking.
>
> Well, it seems coal is important not only for generating very high  
> temperatures, but also for the chemical use of carbon monoxide in  
> extracting the iron from iron ore.
>
> There are alternatives – maybe – such a DRI and ‘sponge iron’.   
> Hydrogen can be used instead of carbon monoxide but is so much more  
> expensive.
>
> The Comments listed at the end of this article (on the Net) are  
> insightful.
>
> Interested in other people’s comments on steel production vis-à-vis  
> renewable energy.
>
> Cheers,
> GeoffH
>
>
>
> http://theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/308896/explosive- 
> growth-steel-production-china-why-it-matters
> The Explosive Growth of Steel Production in China: Why It Matters
> Posted November 27, 2013
> Keywords: Carbon and De-carbonization, Energy Security, Tech,  
> Sustainability, Coal, Environmental Policy, China, Energy, Energy  
> and Economy, Energy Collective Exclusive, Fuels, china, industry  
> growth, steel, The Energy Transition
>
> China and Steel Growth
> There is no material more fundamental to industrial civilization  
> than steel. Modern buildings, ships, cars, planes and bridges would  
> all be unthinkable without steel, and as pointed out by Allwood and  
> Cullen in their fine recent book on materials production we  
> currently have no viable substitute materials that could perform  
> steel's multiple functions. We are still very much living in the  
> iron age.
> Global production of steel has now reached almost 1.5 billion  
> tonnes each year. The geographic make up of steel production  
> however has changed profoundly in the last decade. In the year 2000  
> China produced 15% of the world's steel. Today almost half of the  
> world's steel is made in China, with Chinese steel production  
> increasing by over 500% since 2000. The astonishing levels of steel  
> consumption in China is illustrated by the fact that 60% of rebar,  
> used in buildings to reinforce concrete, that is produced each year  
> is now consumed in China.
>
> Energy requirements of steel manufacturing in China
> Last year China produced 708 million tonnes of steel. On average  
> each tonne of steel produced in China requires the equivalent of  
> 0.69 tonnes of coal in energy consumption. In other words China's  
> steel industry consumes the equivalent of 500 million tonnes of  
> coal each year, and this being China more or less all of the energy  
> used to make steel comes from coal. China's steel industry consumes  
> almost 7% of the world's coal, and if China's steel industry was a  
> country it would rank 6th globally in total primary energy  
> consumption, ranking above both Germany and Canada. A comparison of  
> this level of energy consumption with current global consumption of  
> wind and solar energy is sobering.
>
> As with all comparisons of energy consumption, methods and  
> calculations should be laid out transparently. Here I will compare  
> the total primary energy consumption of China's steel industry with  
> global primary energy consumption of wind and solar. In 2012 wind  
> and solar electricity production was 614 TWh (trillion watt hours).  
> However to make a more apples to apples comparison we should ask  
> how much coal would be needed to produce this electricity. Using  
> this approach current annual global energy consumption from wind  
> and solar works out as 200 million tonnes of coal equivalent (using  
> EIA's conversion methodology and BP's assumptions for the average  
> thermal efficiency of power plants).  Therefore growth in global  
> energy consumption from wind and solar since 2000 has been  
> approximately half of the increase in energy consumption by China's  
> steel sector alone. A stark illustration of how little has been  
> achieved in the transition to low carbon energy.
>
> This rapid growth in Chinese steel consumption poses another  
> problem. We are not only fundamentally dependent on steel  
> production, but as Vaclav Smil points out steel production is more  
> or less fundamentally dependent on the large scale use of coal,  
> with no prospect of a transition to low carbon methods of steel  
> production in the short to medium term. Calls to fully dismantle  
> the coal industry must consider how we can make steel without coal,  
> because currently no methods seem particularly feasible. Globally  
> about 1 billion tonnes of coal is used to produce steel,  
> representing 14% of total coal production, with steel and iron  
> production equating to over 6% of global carbon dioxide emissions.  
> This figure is much higher than that of the aviation industry, yet  
> have you ever read an op-ed calling steel manufacturing a rogue  
> industry?
>
> The vast disparities in steel consumption in the world today  
> suggest that a significant increase in overall steel consumption is  
> inevitable and probably desirable. We are however reaching the  
> limits of how efficiently steel can be produced, and despite  
> multiple opportunities to improve the rationality of steel use it  
> appears clear that we will need to mine hundreds of millions of  
> tonnes of coal each year to produce steel for decades, and more  
> likely, generations to come. These realities should be borne in  
> mind by those who claim there are no significant barriers to 100%  
> renewable energy."
>
>
> Hi GeoffH, thing with steel making is to remove the oxygen from the  
> Iron Ore, ( basically iron oxide) which is done by the carbon in  
> the charcoal (coal,) but charcoal is not the only way (the Japanese  
> have been using wood charcoal to make steel from 6000BC) nor is  
> coal the best source of charcoal, so this is a fruit-full area of  
> possible development.
> Interestingly, there was a development called Direct Reduced Iron  
> some 20 odd years ago where electricity was used on an iron/carbon  
> briquette, (my vague remembering) and of course in this time we can  
> talk of electricity from Solar, Wind, Geothermal or tidal/wave to  
> provide at times when any of those have too much, but on another  
> side, my grandfather who was a railwayman in between fishing, when  
> they mixed aluminium powder with rust, to weld the rails together,  
> - the yearning of the aluminium for oxygen (which is normally  
> halted by it's instant oxide coating) would cause it to burn in  
> that reduced environment, created by the railway workers with clay  
> moulds from local mud, so the aluminium would effectively  
> disappear, (evaporate or float to the top) leaving superheated  
> steel which would go down into the clay mould between the two rail  
> ends - so hot it would melt the steel rails on either side to join  
> them,
> The point being that not only carbon will do that chemical  
> transformation with steel.
>
> For changing the steel production away from coal we could consider  
> using gasification, where one has a carbon containing substance, -  
> such as waste from cities, burns it without enough oxygen so  
> creates Carbon Monoxide, very hot, so also gives your reaction that  
> energy,  - and of course the carbon monoxide, hungry for more  
> oxygen so that it can become carbon dioxide, takes that oxygen away  
> from the iron oxide, simply put.
>
> Whether we blow that carbon dioxide through an 'algal bloom bed' to  
> make more biomass or vent it to the atmosphere may well be a point  
> but my main point is that the coal can stay in the ground, where it  
> was laid down in the Pleistocene,
>
> So we have, from gasification, carbon monoxide, produced from  
> waste, to make steel.
>
> Cheers,
> Geoff Thomas.
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