Electrified thermochemical systems with high-frequency metamaterial reactors

I think if you want to write papers that use the word "Metamaterial" your choices are Science, Nature and Cell. Like those other two Cell seems to be a molbio journal that publishes an occasional paper in another field, like physics, if it has "Hey Martha" potential but couldn't pass peer review at The National Enquirer. (But even they don't seem to publish exobiology papers by Avi Loeb)

It's in "Joule", one of dozens of less prominent publications on the same platform as Cell.

Already

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

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

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

Their thing is a fancy version of the induction furnace.

Also there is refractory and then there is refractory

https://chemistry.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_elements_by_meltin...

For instance Tungsten melts at 3407 °C, Platinum at 1772 °C, Iron at 1535 °C, Aluminum at 660 °C and there are all sorts of refractory oxides, carbides and nitrides so you can find something to make a vessel out of to hold most metals, if it is hard it is usually not the temperature but the chemical reactivity, e.g. Titanium wants to dissolve almost anything you try to melt it in which is more of a problem for keeping your Ti pure than it is maintaining the container's integrity.

If you look in a chemistry book you'll see most metals can be reduced from oxide ores easily with hydrogen in the lab, the other reagent that commonly works is carbon monoxide, which is what is used in a blast furnace for reduction of iron. Another approach to "green" iron refining is to use carbon monoxide like a conventional blast furnace but capture the carbon dioxide in the exhaust and recycle it by cracking it down into carbon monoxide again.

There are plenty of electrical high heat technologies available already. Mostly companies have stuck with gas mainly because it's cheap and avoided exploring alternatives for quite long for that reason.

But there's plasma heating, arc furnaces, induction heating, infrared, resistive heating, heat pumps, etc. You can cover anything from thousands of degrees to (more commonly) hundreds of degree with these. Some steel plants already use arc furnaces or induction heating to melt the steel.

I'm not sure where this technology sits but it all boils down to cost and effectiveness. If it works as advertised, companies will use it.

The thing with green hydrogen is that you need even more electricity to generate it. Which makes some of these alternatives more economical because you can use the electricity directly at a higher efficiency.