Comment on Know thy enemy
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 week agoYou 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.
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
That’s why I said met coal for steel.
jonne@infosec.pub 1 week 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 1 week ago
That’s why I said met coal for steel.