CO2-Free Fe: Green Steel Tour with Boston Metal

Steelmaking makes up quite a significant portion of global CO2 emissions (about 8%). It is also done using a very old, tried, and true method. To be able to address this, we need to come up with newer, lower-emissions ways of processing iron ore into steel.

Boston Metal is one of the pioneers in this field with their "Molten Oxide Electrolysis" process. In this video, I had a tour of their facilities in Woburn, Massachusetts, and spoke with the brilliant minds working there about their technology and developments.

Bookmarks:
0:00 Intro
2:50 Boston Metal's Development Stages
3:04 0.1 kA Lab Cell - Experiments, Molten Oxide Electrolysis process
4:28 0.25 and 2.5 kA Semi-Industrial Cells - Feeding, electrolysis, and tapping
6:29 25 kA Industrial Cell - Interview with Senior VP of Technology Stephan Broek
8:22 Scaling up the technology - What is the goal, metal manufacturing landscape, what's next for Boston Metal, compromises and challenges
11:42 Rosie's thoughts on the tour and the technology
12:25 Outro

Sources:
IEA - Iron and Steel Technology Roadmap
https://www.iea.org/reports/iron-and-...

Boston Metal
https://www.bostonmetal.com/

Allanore, Yin and Sadoway - A new anode material for oxygen evolution in molten oxide electrolysis
https://www.nature.com/articles/natur...

A huge thank you to Boston Metal (and to Manisha, Heather, Karina, and Stephan) for the tour, supplementary information, and additional video footage!

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