The feds have funded a trial to be held in Gary, IN. In theory it works. In the lab it probably works. Will it work in a plant? Is it practical? We shall see.
If not we can always import cast iron billets from Russia or China and let them emit all that carbon monoxide.
The Cleveland-Cliffs trial marks a major step toward decarbonizing the steel industry, which is one of the biggest emitters in the broad U.S. industrial sector. Hydrogen, a powerful energy source thatâs expensive to produce, does not emit greenhouse gases when burned. Atoms produced cleanly are rapidly emerging as core pieces of global climate strategy.
All told, U.S. steel manufacturing produces roughly 1 percent of U.S. emissions and 7 to 8 percent of emissions globally â a modest but necessary area of decarbonization for the globe to prevent extreme temperature rise, according to climate scientists and energy experts.
But despite talk of using hydrogen produced with less emissions in the coming years, Cleveland-Cliffs and other U.S. firms are trailing European competitors in the race for a new generation of steel with no greenhouse gas emissions linked to its production. Swedish firms SSAB and H2 Green Steel are already demonstrating zero-emissions steel and inking contracts with companies like Volvo.
John Filostrat, BOEMâs (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) director of public affairs for its Gulf of Mexico office, said in a comment that BOEM nonetheless remains confident in the regionâs potential thanks to âexisting energy infrastructure, workforce, and businesses expertise.â
âOffshore wind energy is a new industry in the Gulf of Mexico,â Filostrat said. âIt will take some time to develop, but we are confident that industry interest remains for the offshore wind market in the Gulf.â
Filostrat said this is the first RFCI for the Gulf of Mexico, but BOEM has previously issued them for lease areas in the Pacific, Gulf of Maine and New York Bight. A noncompetitive offshore wind lease issuance also wouldnât be BOEMâs first â that lease type was issued for the 120-MW Skipjack Wind 1 and the 12-MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind research lease.
BOEM said that it received 25 comments in response to its March proposed sale notice about the auction, but only one company expressed interest in participating. The agency said it might still move forward with a second auction âat a future time, based on industry interest.â
The areas selected by Hecate Energy are off the coast of southeast Texas and were identified as suitable wind energy areas by BOEM in 2021, the agency said. They total 74,113 and 68,239 acres, respectively, for a total of 142,352 acres. Hecate Energy made the request in February, proposing a project that would generate up to 3 GW, according to BOEM.
The canceled auction would have offered four offshore wind energy areas totaling 410,060 acres offshore Louisiana and Texas â two of those being lease areas that failed to sell during the first Gulf of Mexico auction in 2023.
The 2023 auction saw tepid interest overall, along with low prices. Of the three leases auctioned, only one was sold â that lease went to RWE Offshore US Gulf, which bid $5.6 million for a 1.24-GW capacity, 102,480-acre tract offshore Lake Charles.
The region has a âGoldilocks issue,â Cameron Poole, an energy and innovation associate at economic development agency Greater New Orleans, said in a recent interview.
âOur wind resources arenât, on average and day to day, the strongest for the existing set of turbine classes,â Poole said. âSo that becomes a bottom line issue â how profitable is any prospective Gulf of Mexico project? And then inversely, we have, of course, the hurricane prevalence.â
In a comment about the cancellation of the auction, Poole said, âGNOwind [Alliance] members have held that this came down the pike way too quickly. Since the process was initiated last August, right off the heels of the first auction, we had advocated for a delay in proceeding with the next competitive opportunity.â
âThe timeline gave little time for the work on the ground to yield results to support this interest,â he said.
According to Poole, developers have made clear that they want to see more coordination at the state level regarding offtake and procurement, as well as more technological advancement, in order to buy into the market more confidently.
Louisiana is working on a strategic roadmap for offshore wind, Poole said, and âinnovators like Gulf Wind Technology are continuing to advance their proposed solutions for turbines operating in these conditions,â but âthese efforts all take time.â
âAs much as it is crucial for BOEM to provide consistent opportunities for developers to dive into this complex market, itâs just as important that those opportunities align with progress,â he said. âIn this instance, the opportunity far preceded the ability for the state and federal level activities to bear fruit. As such, we remain optimistic that the right work is being done now to ensure continued progress in the Gulf in the future.â
Practical, as in economic costâŚ
Europe:
âNorwegian energy giant Equinor has scrapped plans to produce so-called blue hydrogen, citing high costs and insufficient demandâŚâ
Asia:
âProduction costs will soar, requiring more than $150/mt extra to produce iron, compared to iron that comes from conventional blast furnaces, according to Baosteel dataâŚâ
US:
âCleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves said the Ohio-based company produces the steel with the lowest carbon emissions in the world. But he said his company cannot persuade buyers, mostly in the automobile sector, to pay the price to cover the costs of producing more environmentally friendly steelâŚâ
DB2
[quote=âjaagu, post:23, topic:108271â]
[quote=âDrBob2, post:19, topic:108271â]
(almost) nobody is interested in offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico.
John Filostrat, BOEMâs (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) director of public affairs for its Gulf of Mexico office, saidâŚ"we are confident that industry interest remains for the offshore wind market in the Gulf.â
Letâs review. The BOEMâs first auction in the summer of 2023 only had one bid for one parcel. Then in the fall they announced a second auction for more parcels. They later postponed the second auction and then canceled it altogether this August due to âa lack of competitive interest.â
Industry interest remains, but Iâm not sure where they put the remains.
Perhaps the BOEM could take a leaf out of Leapâs playbook and mandate this construction
DB2
Keep in mind steel from hydrogen is only the most recent idea. Just as you can make blue hydrogen from natural gas by collecting the carbon dioxide and sequestering it, blue steel should also be possible. Capture the carbon monoxide from coke, burn it for fuel, and capture the carbon dioxide.
I suspect blue steel means much more investment for steel mills. The reason they like hydrogen better. And you still have all the stuff coming out of coke ovens.
No one suggests doing without steel. (More plastic, aluminum, copper???). We could import more and export the green house gasses. We already recycle lots of steel as scrap iron.
I would want Congress to do that.
Maybe maybe not. Steel can be made without coal.
âNo firm customersâ | Failed hydrogen project leaves âŹ10m hole in cityâs accounts amid spiralling costs
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/production/-no-firm-customers-failed-hydrogen-project-leaves-10m-hole-in-city-s-accounts-amid-spiralling-costs/2-1-1692595?
The refusal of potential green hydrogen customers to sign binding sales agreements, as well as uncertainty over the price of the product, contributed to the collapse of a plan to build a renewable H2 project in the German city of Hannover, city officials have reported, noting that the failed scheme has left them with bills of over âŹ10m ($11m).
Hannoverâs city drainage department originally hatched the plan to build the 17MW project at an existing sewage plant in 2021, estimating that it would cost around âŹ25m. However, by the time the project was cancelled in March this year, costs had ballooned five-fold to around âŹ136m.
DB2
Shell shelves Norway hydrogen project due to lack of demand
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/shell-shelves-norway-hydrogen-project-due-lack-demand-2024-09-23/
Shell has scrapped plans for a low-carbon hydrogen plant on Norwayâs west coast due to a lack of demand, the energy company said on Monday, days after Equinor cancelled a similar planned project in Norway.
Hydrogen derived from natural gas in combination with carbon capture and storage, known as blue hydrogen, has been touted as a stepping stone to decarbonising European industry and meeting climate goals, but it is more costly than traditional methods.
âWe havenât seen the market for blue hydrogen materialise and decided not to progress the project,â said a spokesperson for Shell in Norway.
DB2
Re: steel w/o coal
Iron ore is an oxide â essentially rust. Converting it to iron metal requires burning off those oxygens. That is usually done with coke in a blast furnace.
Yes, that can be done with hydrogen instead. Iâm not aware of any alternatives. An electrolysis process as they do with aluminum would be interesting.
Yes, steel can be made in an electric furnace but from scrap iron or pig iron from a blast furnace. Not from iron ore.
It is not clear enough to say this is using iron ore but that is the goal in this article. Oxygen is released which counters what you are saying.
Yes iron ore.
Thanks, Leap. That is news to me.
The âelectrolyteâ is probably molten iron. The âinert electrodeâ is the interesting part. Molten steel is white hot 2200 deg. They usually use refractory bricks to line vessels to resist that temperature. How do you make electrodes for those temperatures.
In phosphorus furnaces (where you are burning off oxygens from phosphate rock) carbon electrodes are used. So again potential to emit carbon oxides.
Somewhere back more than 4 years a Ph.D. student of Sadowayâs found a film to put over the anode to stop the anode from melting while catalyzing the process. Youâd have to search under Donald Sadoway for more. You would love reading on his works if you have not heard of him. He is one of the main people at MIT working on batteries and other material sciences.
See more on the new thread on Steel and Hydrogen
https://discussion.fool.com/t/steel-and-hydrogen-new-thread/109043
But you still have to add some carbon to the iron to get steel. The carbon in steel, IIRC comes from the coal. The production of steel (mostly iron and a little carbon plus trace amount of other intentional elements) was an accidental discovery since they used coal to heat the iron.
Mike
Most carbon emissions in steel making comes from converting iron ore into iron metal by reduction using coke to burn the oxygen in iron ore to mostly carbon monoxide. The alternative is the use of hydrogen. Article quoted gives numbers.
As previously noted you can make steel from scrap iron (or pig iron from a blast furnace) in an electric furnace. Much less carbon emitted but other thread shows carbon electrodes are used. So less, not zero.
And hydrogen conversion is experimental not commercial. DIR with synthesis gas from natural gas is known and popular in India. Conversion to hydrogen rather than hydrogen/CO mix seems a likely solution when hydrogen is abundant and cheap.
True in the past till now. But full of misnomers when the better method comes along as it has.
According to research from MIT, steel produced without carbon using their new process can be just as strong, if not stronger, than traditional carbon-based steel, while significantly reducing carbon emissions due to the elimination of the need for carbon-rich coke in the steelmaking process; this new method is being developed by an MIT spinoff company called Boston Metal
I think you are missing my point. Yes, they donât use coal for heat. But they still use carbonâŚfrom somewhere ⌠in the chemical makeup of the steel. If you donât add carbon to the iron you donât get steel. Unless theyâve invented a new alloy of iron.
Mike
Mike,
The coal or coke is to get the heat up in the process. It burns off. That is the pollution as you know or CO2.
You can get steel without carbon. In fact it always burns off in the production of steel.
It is a misnomer that carbon has to be involved.
Both SSAB Zero⢠and SSAB Fossil-free⢠steel , are steels with no carbon emissions. SSAB Zero is based on scrap. SSAB Fossil-free steel is based on iron-ore produced without fossil fuels,
Other way around. Massive amounts of carbon come in the iron from the blast furnace. That is cast iron or pig iron. Traditionally you heat it red hot and pound it to drive out more of the slag to strengthen it. That is what a foundry does to make forged iron. Traditional black smith work.
Next step to make steel is to burn out the extra carbon. Carbon steel yes but you burn out the extra carbon. Hydrogen processing might change that. But carbon still comes from the electrodes in an electric furnace.