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Electrasteel Inc., a developer of a more-sustainable iron and steel production process that does business as Electra, recently began a pilot manufacturing run at its Boulder facility.
The process operates at 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
For the past 150 years, steelmaking has been a big, hot business centered around enormous blast furnaces that burn metallurgical coal to melt iron. Those furnaces are the chief driver of the industry’s enormous carbon footprint; it’s responsible for 7 to 9 percent of human-caused global greenhouse gas emissions.
Nucor is one of a few companies backing Electra which electrochemically refines iron ore into pure iron at 60 degrees Celsius, allowing it to use renewable energy instead of coal.
As economies grow, steel demand will also grow — a product used in everything from buildings to bridges to automobiles. Can the sector decarbonize?