A hulking steel plant in Middletown,Ā Ohio, is the cityās economic heartbeat as well as a keystoneĀ origin storyĀ ofĀ JD Vance, the hometown senator now running to beĀ Donald Trumpās vice-president.
Its future, however, may hinge uponĀ $500 million in funding from landmark climate legislation that Vance has called a āscamā and is a Trump target for demolition.
In March,Ā Joe Bidenās administrationĀ announcedĀ the USās largest ever grant to produce greener steel, enabling theĀ Cleveland-CliffsĀ facility in Middletown to build one of the largest hydrogen fuel furnaces in the world, cutting emissions by a million tons a year by ditching the coal that accelerates theĀ climate crisisĀ and befouls the air for nearby locals.
ā¦
When campaigning for the Senate in 2022, Vance said Bidenās sweeping climate bill is ādumb, does nothing for the environment and will make us all poorer,ā and more recently as vice-presidential candidate called the IRA a āgreen energy scam thatās actually shipped a lot more manufacturing jobs to China.ā
Register to vote: https://vote.gov/
Hey, itās a āhydrogenā thing thatās actually not blatant greenwashing, for once! I was skeptical, so I read through to the press release and Wikipedia to figure out what it was talking about, and now Iāll share with the class:
Calling this a āhydrogen fuel furnaceā is misleading. The point of this thing isnāt to use hydrogen as an energy storage medium and then burn it to produce heat/fuel-cell-react it to produce electricity. Instead, the point is to use the hydrogen itself as a reactant in the reduction reaction to convert iron oxides to metallic iron. (In other words, thereās actually a good reason for it to use hydrogen specifically, unlike the hydrogen cars we more commonly hear about.)
Specifically, reduction of iron typically occurs via two paths, using either carbon monoxide (CO) or hydrogen gas (H2). In a ānormalā foundry these gases are typically obtained as combustion products of burning coal and the reduction happens along a mix of the two paths.
3 Fe2O3 + CO ā¶ 2 Fe3O4 + CO2
Fe3O4 + CO ā¶ 3 FeO + CO2
FeO + CO ā¶ Fe + CO2
3 Fe2O3 + H2 ā¶ 2 Fe3O4 + H2O
Fe3O4 + H2 ā¶ 3 FeO + H2O
FeO + H2 ā¶ Fe + H2O
Using pure H2 as the reducing gas eliminates the first path, and produces the iron metal without needing any carbon (assuming it used āgreen hydrogenā (produced by electrolyzing water using electricity from renewable sources) rather than āblue hydrogenā (produced from natural gas), as doing otherwise would completely defeat the purpose).
There are two caveats, here:
Steel plants still need carbon inputs in order to carburize the iron into steel. Thatās not a problem in terms of global warming emissions as the carbon is consumed in the process and becomes part of the steel, but it does mean the thing would still consume fossil fuels. (Maybe thereās an opportunity in the future to hook it to CO2-capture systems and make it net-negative?)
The press release describes the furnace being funded as āhydrogen-ready flex-fuelā. In other words, itās not actually going to run in the environmentally-superior mode I described; itās just capable of it. The actual magnitude of improvement will be fuck-all until they go further and install a āgreen hydrogenā source at some undetermined later date that the press release doesnāt even contemplate.
Remember kids, if someone proposes using hydrogen for something other than fertilizer or steel or rocket fuel, itās not a good application of hydrogen
Thanks for the effort. It was very informative.