192
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2026
192 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
43629 readers
496 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's pretty amazing. Building construction make up a huge part of our carbon footprint.
If we could get 100% green cement (and steel), it would significantly decrease our emissions.
Steel is a lot more tricky as generally fossil fuels are burnt directly inside the blast furnace. There are a few alternative "green steel" processing routes that avoid this but iirc none of them are hugely competitive at the moment.
There's definitely some in Germany. Iirc they use hydrogen generated from electrolysis
There's some sort of electrolytic process similar to aluminium available, but yes the reaction that turns iron ore into iron is:
Iron oxide + carbon monoxide + heat ->
A redox reaction where oxygen atoms are transferred from iron oxide to carbon monoxide ->
Iron + CO2.
Heat and CO is conveniently provided by burning coal/coke in a blast furnace in the presence of a lot of oxygen.
You can pretty much just chuck layers of coke and iron ore in the top of your blast furnace, pump high pressure oxygen into the centre, and get molten iron straight out the bottom.