coal can be substituted to some degree with processes like direct reduction. hydrogen works but syngas from biomass or trash also works
Comment on Know thy enemy
someguy3@lemmy.world 3 months agoAnd oil for Styrofoam. And met coal for steel.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
barsoap@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Everything that comes out of a petrochemical plant can be made without oil, in fact BASF had recipes in place for decades now and is switching sources as the price shifts. Push come to shove they can produce everything from starch. It’s also why they hardly blinked when Russia turned off the gas.
The carbon that actually ends up in steel is a quite negligible amount (usually under 1%, over 2% you get cast iron), you can get that out of the local forest, and to reduce the iron hydrogen works perfectly, the first furnances are already online.
jonne@infosec.pub 3 months ago
There’s alternative processes, and if you avoid burning oil for fuel you can basically do all that with the amount of oil that’s in easy reach instead of using tar sands or drilling into even more difficult to reach places.
someguy3@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You have to be careful when talking about steel because coal is both an ingredient (steel is iron + carbon) and used for heating afaik. You can take coal out of the heating step (confusingly called steel making) but not out of the ingredient step, unless you want to find a different carbon source.
jonne@infosec.pub 3 months ago
There’s (admittedly comparatively expensive) alternative processes, and even if you stick to the old process and just stop using coal for electricity generation you’d cut coal use by 75%.
Not to mention, the carbon that stays in the steel doesn’t actually go into the atmosphere, so there’s less CO2 emissions for that specific use if you can substitute the fuel used for heating.
someguy3@lemmy.world 3 months ago
That’s why I said met coal for steel.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
you’re probably talking about direct reduced iron and it’s really a problem that can be dealt with easily, just chuck a piece of coke when it’s molten for the second time in electric arc furnace (and maybe electrodes introduce enough carbon)
maybe there’s a way to make electrowinning iron economical, and it’d be pretty green too, but i don’t know if it is workable
someguy3@lemmy.world 3 months ago
That’s why I said met coal for steel.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
the problem with tar sands is a fundamental energy conversion issue. It’s really hard to refine because you don’t get nearly as much energy out as you put in, compared to something like fracking.
It may become reasonable in the future with really cheap renewable energy and higher oil prices for example, but as of right now, it’s economically unviable.