Coal

[Big Dave]

Re: Post #10

There are lots of ways to classify coal. It has been intensely studied since the eighteenth century.

Coal will probably always be needed for making steel.

[freebeard]

More than Anthracite/Bituminous? Anthracite is 'clean coal'. Bituminous is closer to peat.

[oil pan 4]

K?

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Big Dave

Coal will probably always be needed for making steel.

IIRC there were some studies regarding the usage of charcoal instead of fossil coal. It may seem troublesome due to claims of an increased deforestation, but residues of processing of some crops (including some fruits and nuts native to Amazon and other rainforests) can be a feedstock for high-quality charcoal.

[freebeard]

Too busy to mention it this morning but the new kid on the block is electric smelting

Originally Posted by DDG

Making iron without coal or carbon dioxide - News - The ...
https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/...bon-dioxide-1/
Conventional iron-making setups use hydrogen and carbon monoxide from natural gas or coal to remove the oxygen from iron oxide pellets, producing CO 2. The consortium instead plans to reduce the iron using only hydrogen, produced by splitting water with electrolysis powered by clean electricity, an SSAB spokesperson told The Chemical Engineer.
....

Can you produce steel without coal or oil? - Quora
https://www.quora.com/Can-you-produc...or-oil?share=1
Sure, if you have non fossil fuel sources of electricity. You will need some carbon (as much as 2%) to turn the iron into steel, but that can easily come from renewable resources. Set up an electric arc furnace to supply the heat, and if you use c...

The era of making steel without carbon emissions is here ...
https://www.aumanufacturing.com.au/t...ssions-is-here
The company's molten oxide electrolysis produces steel using electricity instead of coal. Gates said: "Boston Metal is working on a way to make steel using electricity instead of coal, and to make it just as strong and cheap.

[Piotrsko]

Cast iron has lots of impurities relative to steel. Once it is molten, by any process you choose, you remove all the impurities through chemical absorption or oxidation. Bessemer used air jets through the kettle and scraped off the slag.

Then you put the materials back in in the proportion you need. Not rocket science.

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

IIRC there were some studies regarding the usage of charcoal instead of fossil coal. It may seem troublesome due to claims of an increased deforestation, but residues of processing of some crops (including some fruits and nuts native to Amazon and other rainforests) can be a feedstock for high-quality charcoal.

All the metal smelting in western Montana was done with charcoal from local kilns before coal was available. Ironically Montana is like tha Saudia Arabia of coal but they didn't know it was there or had no access to it or the developed coal of the east. What they did have was forests and clay so they built these beehive looking kilns and burned the wood starved of oxygen to make charcoal. Burns hot enough to extract any metals out of solid rocks.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Most of the Brazilian coal, usually located in Santa Catarina and my home state Rio Grande do Sul, is of a low quality with a lot of sulphur contamination, just like the coal which exploded aboard the Titanic leading to a fire that weakened a section of the hull, leading to the sheetmetal being shredded at the impact with the iceberg. So, most of the Brazilian steel mills operate with coal imported from South Africa, while local coal is mostly used as a fuel for powerplants.