Startup just hit a big milestone for green steel production

> Boston Metal uses electricity in a process called molten oxide electrolysis (MOE). Iron ore gets loaded into a reactor, mixed with other ingredients, and then electricity is run through it, heating the mixture to around 1,600 °C (2,900 °F) and driving the reactions needed to make iron. That iron can then be turned into steel.

Big picture - it's like smelting Aluminum, but with Fe instead of Al.* And about 600 °C (1,000 °F) hotter.

On the plus side, Fe is not nearly as fond of oxygen as Al is - greatly reducing the electrical energy needed to reduce the ore to metal.

> The next step is to build an even bigger system, Rauwerdink says—something that won’t fit in the Boston facility. While a reactor of the current size can make a ton or two of material in about a month, the truly industrial-scale equipment will make that amount of metal in about a day. That demonstration plant should come online in late 2026 and begin operation in 2027, he says. Ultimately, the company hopes to license its technology to steelmakers.

From a quick search, it looks like steel is worth ~$500/ton. So calling a 1-2 ton/day system "truly industrial-scale" might be correct language among metallurgical researchers...but it's probably orders of magnitude smaller than you'd need for an economically viable facility.

Maybe start with trying to manufacture some very expensive, low-volume specialty steels?

*EDIT: The usual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall-H%C3%A9roult_process , for smelting aluminum, does emit a fair amount of CO2 - because [messy details]. The article basically says nothing about the actual process they're using for iron, ruling out a close comparison.

SSAB is completing their new 190-tonne alternate current electric arc furnace by end of next year, which should yield about 500-800k carbon free tonnes of steel plate and coil per year.

They plan to convert all their Nordic plants to carbon free by 2030 and have some plants also in the North America.

https://eurometal.net/ssab-starts-construction-of-eaf-at-oxe... https://www.ssab.com/en/news/2025/03/new-electric-arc-furnac...

Carbon neutral as long as your electricity is carbon neutral.

Also many steel mills are built so that they can switch between energy source, oil, coal, gas, which ever happens to be cheapest currently.

It's a commodity business, price is almost all that matters. And with the current US Administration the days of carbon subsidies might be numbered.