| Abstract Scope |
More than 1.8 billion tons of steel are produced per year, making it the most important alloy in terms of volume and impact. While steel is a sustainability enabler, through lightweight cars, wind farms and magnets, its primary production is not. Iron is reduced from ore using carbon. This produces >2t CO2 per t of steel, i.e. 30% of the CO2 emissions in manufacturing. These emissions can be reduced when replacing carbon by hydrogen as reductant. The kinetics of the reaction strongly depends on the ore’s chemistry and microstructure, specifically on damage and fracture associated with phase transformation and mass transport during reduction. Understanding these effects is key to make the hydrogen-based reduction of iron ores commercially viable, enabling massive CO2 reductions. This lecture reports about the recent progress in this research field, presenting results of a multi-scale structure and composition analysis of iron reduced from hematite with pure H2. |