Sweden delivered the world’s first fossil fuel-free steel | Hacker News Reader

Sweden delivered the world’s first fossil fuel-free steel

forbes.com

120 pointsintellaughs48 comments

I doubt this is the first fossil fuel-free steel, even in modern times. Here in Argentina one of our biggest steel factories had a very big eucalyptus forest just to make coal. From https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aceros_Zapla_S.A

Autotranslation: https://translate.google.com/?tab=TT#es/en/Aceros%20Zapla%20...

> "Aceros Zapla" (ex- "Altos Hornos Zapla") was a steel forest mining complex located in the department Palpalá province of Jujuy, Argentina. It was the first steel center of Argentina [...]

> It had 15,000 ha of a forest of 30 million eucalyptus trees to extract the necessary coal in the process, [...]

Elba island was completely deforested to produce iron/steel.

In this case it was[1] a huge artificial forest of eucalyptus. They grow pretty fast without those nasty koalas nearby. You can cut them and they regrow from the roots, but after a few times they planted new trees.

I'm not sure if they replaced the local forest with the eucalyptus, but my guess is that the areas was already used to cultivate corn, tobacco, sugar cane or something.

[1] I'm not sure about the current state. My guess is that it is still there, but that steel mill had a complicated story in the last 30 years.

The original meaning of “collier” was a charcoal maker, not a coal miner. The relevant part of steel making is discussed in this episode of Bret Devereaux’s blog:

https://acoup.blog/2020/09/25/collections-iron-how-did-they-...

Is coal not fossil fuel?

Yes, it is. From the description given, they were probably turning the trees into charcoal, which isn’t technically a fossil fuel: The carbon being released was only captured within the last few centuries, during the life of the tree.

Yep, it's charcoal. Sorry for the bad translation, but we use the same word here.

I'm a bit sad there's so much nitpicking on a good thing. Sure, it's not technically the first. Can we just enjoy the advance of making goods more sustainably?

We absolutely can. But if people lie, they should expect to get called on it.

It’s the first _coal_ free steel and the vast majority of coal used is fossil and the rest comes from forests that probably wouldn’t be able to sustain the required level of steel production (Sweden produces 80% of the iron ore in the EU and needs its forests for other things than creating steel)

Yeah, but the amount is what I commented on. At the time of writing, if I remember correctly there was hardly another type of comment to be found.

Low temperature electrowinning of iron would be the holy grail https://energy.nl/en/factsheet/low-temperature-electrowinnin...

There's also the crazy idea of direct electrochemical reduction of molten ore, which I've seen talked about in connection with lunar applications, but this looks like something you might even try at home (with the right equipment of course).

That is interesting, thanks.

If I'm reading the PDF right, it uses about 12 PJ per tonne of iron produced.

Best current practice with coking coal is about 15 GJ per tonne.[1]

So just a little energy efficiency improvement required.

1. Smil, V. Energy In Nature And Society 2008, p. 283 of paperback.

Wasn't all steel before the 1800's or so made with wood?

Prior to the invention of the Bessemer Process, it was mostly made with charcoal, so yes. Of course it was also very expensive and made in small batches.

there are new exploited deposits of hydrogen, formed at great depths under high pressure and temperatures. https://hydroma.ca/en/ is one I do not know if there are more and their production volume?

It's still a fossil fuel though. Not emitting climate affecting gasses one but still.

Turns out releasing hydrogen in the atmosphere has some greenhouse effects: http://www.ghgonline.org/otherhydrogen.htm

No, It is a reaction between buried iron oxide and water. This is very high temperature high pressure reaction. The iron oxide changes oxidation state, releasing hydrogen. Here is one, there are others, like the one I cited. https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202010.0589/v1/download

It was made with charcoal which is made from wood, yes. But charcoal is man-made coal which is still bad from an emissions perspective. This process, on the other hand, does not use coal at all.

Charcoal is nearly carbon-neutral, with the carbon coming from the air via trees or other biomass. It's bad for deforestation reasons, but it's not carbon-intensive.

charcoal can be good or bad from a forestation perspective. Good is a healthy cycle and removal of trees as a contributor to that process.

Forests should not envelope all of the world, as that would kill of a number of other ecosystems.

The idea that forest should dominate everywhere is actually anti-ecological, in that it disrupts that natural balance.

We have in many cases, localized growth of forest, and regional deforestation [1]. Because the trees making up these ecological systems are local/regional also, we should seek to undo that damage where possible.

[1] https://blog.tentree.com/fact-check-are-there-really-more-tr...

> The idea that forest should dominate everywhere is actually anti-ecological

How do you define "ecological"? I would define it as nature without human intervention. Besides, there is no reason to believe that forest would "envelop all of the world" in such a way that is unsustainable because nature has its own check and balance for that.

So I don't buy the argument that some of the activities that we do are beneficial to nature. You can of course argue that they are sustainable and not destructive in long term.

Living in California, I can tell you that yes, nature has checks and balances for that. The main check is fire, and we have suppressed it for decades. The forest density in managed national forests here vs unmanaged wilderness areas is something like 10 to 1 I’d say. And now the fire is coming anyway.

It does temporarily release CO2 into the atmosphere until new trees have absorbed it.

So it will temporarily not be carbon-neutral, but be neutral over time if the average amount of coal stored in trees doesn’t get affected by the new use of trees.

Could be seem as cannon negative, since the carbon is permanently captured in the steel.

> But charcoal is man-made coal

It was fossil-fuel-free, though. Which makes the headline wrong.

How did they mine the iron ore without fossil fuels? The mining industry accounts for ~10% of world energy consumption. Around ~80% of the world's electricity use.

Swedish electricity production is essentially carbon neutral. There’s a 50/50 split between nuclear and renewables. At times, there’s imports from the European grid, which does include coal and gas &c, so by that accounting it may not be fully neutral. However, the mining industry is in the far north which has an abundance of cheap hydropower, so it’s probably true that the ore can be mined entirely using renewable energy in Sweden.

What is often forgotten, when mentioning the imports of "dirty" power from abroad, is that Sweden exports way more electricity per year than gets imported (for 2020, 37 TWh exported and 12 TWh imported).

Sweden has had an electricity surplus since 2011, mostly due to wind power.

Finding someone willing to buy excess power when weather conditions are optimal is not the same thing as burning fossil fuels in order to generate power. Describing the two as being equal is dishonest and it harms the very important goal of stopping climate change.

Sweden export more textile that is produce by non-child labor than they buy textile that is produce by child labor. They have a surplus in ethical produced textile.

"can" doesn't mean they are. Sweden produces ~80 million tons of ore per year. I can say with 100% certainty that they are not doing the heavy lifting with renewables.

They do have a test mine that is carbon free and are working actively on scaling it up: https://www.lkab.com/en/about-lkab/technological-and-process...

I’m sure there’s machinery in use which is powered by fossil fueles. You did mention separately that the mining industry is a heavy user of electricity, though, so I was referring to that aspect in particular. Apologies for not making that clear.

That's a great question. They've stated the aim is to electrify the whole fleet of machines and vehicles (the main transport by train has been in place for a long time[1]), including the entire mine, but I doubt there's been enough time to design/construct that kind of equipment. Information is scarce on this.

I would guess it's a bit of a marketing stunt only counting the actual production process for now (and possibly transport) for this pilot project.

BTW, the steel industry in Sweden currently eats up about 15% of the electricity production of the nation (and the two main companies together, LKAB and SSAB, are responsible for about the same percentage of all CO2 emissions). This new project, when fully operational, will require an additional 50% of the current total capacity, which will definitely be a challenge.

[1]: https://wikiless.org/wiki/Iron_Ore_Line?lang=en

Isn’t “green hydrogen” a sham? I thought the production of it wasn’t actually very CO2 friendly and comes out of fossils fuels themselves?

Well there's "blue hydrogen" and "brown hydrogen" which are produced from natural gas and coal respectively.

Green hydrogen is produced through electrolysis, from renewable energy sources like hydro, wind and solar.

> Green hydrogen is produced through electrolysis, from renewable energy sources like hydro, wind and solar.

Terminology correction: From low-carbon energy sources, like wind, solar, nuclear and hydro.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen

This particular steel is made to be 100% CO2 neutral (as is all hydrogen in Sweden). Very much most likely made from hydro power (accounts for about 40% of power generation in Sweden - and the owner of most hydro in Sweden, "Waterfall", which is state owned, is a partner in the project) of from wind. Both energy sources is very common in the north of Sweden.

> CO2 neutral (as is all hydrogen in Sweden). Very much most likely made from hydro power

Now that you put them together like this, I noticed this will probably confuse a lot of people in years to come: hydro power is a very different thing from hydrogen power.

Green hydrogen isn't; the thing you're thinking of isn't called green hydrogen.

One thing the article doesn’t mention is that it takes massive amounts of energy to produce hybrit. LKAB (Government owned ore mining company) will require 55 TWh by the year 2045. That is more than the entire nuclear power production in Sweden today.

On top of that the users of hybrit ore (like SSAB, mentioned in the article) to make steel also requires more energy.

They say they will use electrolysis to create hydrogen from water and a renewable energy source. If they can make that much hydrogen on that scale is unknown.

Ok, but where'd they get the carbon content for the steel?

... and built a car out of it 8)

More and more I distrust and even begin to resent these high-profile, headline ‘advances’.

Sweden is particularly good at this PR effort: always aiming to profile ourselves as the eco-friendly pioneers of the world.

But at the same time, ancient woodland is clearcut at an alarming rate, and wood-burning for energy is largely exempted from Sweden’s carbon footprint.

Cycling and alternative transport is neglected, while cars just get bigger and spending on roads spirals upwards.

But so long as we make headlines for supposedly fossil-free steel, everyone here is proud and happy

Old-growth forests were largely cut down a long time ago. There's some still left, and the majority (but not all) are protected.

The area of 2nd level ("gammelskog"; forests older than 150 years) continues to increase.

Overall, Sweden has a higher amount of forested area now than in 1900, and it's not just planted young growth.

The "save the forest" campaigns of yore were pretty misinformed.

The headline was not "Everything is perfectly sustainable in Sweden" so I don't understand your criticism here. The world starting to produce steel with hydrogen is a great step. It is not necessary that everything is sustainable already to celebrate or at least posivitely acknowledge this news.

I do agree that Sweden is good at PR when it comes to green policies, but I can’t really agree on all your claims.

Cycling neglected? I guess it depends where you live in Sweden but in my city they have added much more bike paths (cykelväg) for several years. It exist regional funds that a kommun can apply for to build more bike paths.

Alternative transport? Like what?

Sweden has been bad on expanding regional train capacity and instead focused on country wide prestige projects like the high speed rail when most commuters travel regional.

Costs for roads will increase as long as population increases are as high as today. That is unavoidable. And seems like the Green Party is all in favor of massive population increase regardless of environmental consequences.

Ancient woodland clearcut at alarming rate? Source?

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