A new player has emerged in the developing field of zero-emissions steel making, promising to deliver commercial quantities of green steel by 2025 without using hydrogen.
Hydrogen made using renewables, has been hailed as the energy and reactant source to replace coking coal in steel manufacturing, accounting for 8 per cent of all CO2 emissions globally.
But an American startup is promising to make green steel a reality within the next three years, without hydrogen, coal or even a blast furnace.
Boston Metal employs a technology known as Molten Oxide Electrolysis (MOE), which uses renewable electricity to turn iron ore into liquefied metal.
Professor Donald Sadoway from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has spent the better part of a decade adopting the technology, widely used in aluminium manufacturing, to make steel and believes the process is more efficient than blast furnace steelmaking.
Last year Swedish company SSAB delivered the first commercial shipment of green steel made using hydrogen to car manufacturer Volvo. The company is expecting to produce industrial quantities of steel from 2026.
The American, Boston Metal is working towards a similar time frame, hoping to establish its first plant in the US by 2025.
While it is an ambitious timeline, vice-president of business development, Adam Rauwerdink, is confident that electrification will be the most efficient way of producing steel in the long run.
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