“Imagine cutting the steel industry emissions by 80%”

For his project, "Reducing Iron Oxides without Carbon by using Hydrogen-Plasma" – in short ROC - Professor Dierk Raabe, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research (MPIE), was awarded a €2.5 million "Advanced Grant" from the European Research Council (ERC). The prize is the ERC's highest scientific award and will enable Raabe to intensify his research into the production of green steel. The project aims to research the physical and chemical fundamentals of reduction processes down to the atomic scale to find the most efficient and sustainable technology for producing green steel.

“The global steel industry,” says Raabe, “is the largest single greenhouse gas emitter on earth, responsible for 8% of the worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. Imagine the impact if we could cut these emissions by 80% or even more. That’s why I’m so thrilled to win this prestigious award.”

It won't be easy to reinvent a 3,500-year-old industry within a few years.
Many researchers are currently at work to find new methods for producing iron partially replacing carbon-containing reducing agents. This is done, for example, by direct reduction in the solid state with natural gas or hydrogen. However, the process is quite slow and many of the fundamental reduction mechanisms are not sufficiently understood.

The "ROC" project is based on:
- using hydrogen plasma instead of carbon as a reducing agent for iron ore, resulting in only water as a by-product;
- using electric arc furnaces combining reduction, melting, mixing, and impurity removal in a single process step.

More information can be found at this link >>

Picture by PxHere

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