Steel Production

https://edge.alluremedia.com.au/uploads/businessinsider/2017/11/iron-ore-steel.jpg

OSE Case

• Recycling of steel from scrap at 1kWhr/kg

energy input. See Solar Steel.

• Another route is reduction of ore using hydrogen. See Hydrogen Reduction Smelting
• OSE's case would be to produce steel from direct reduction, which is more efficient and lower temperature than a blast furnace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron
• Iron mining in the USA - [1]
• Chromium mining (for stainless steel) - Chromite (FeCrO) is reduced to Ferrochrome (FeCr) via carbothermic reduction. Chromite in Oregon, Montana, California - [2]

Distributed Market Substitution Calculations

• Global production is 2 billion tons [3]
• Farm Yields Per Acre shows about 1000 tons per year per acre yields of recycled steel. This means we need square mile scale solar operations per million tons (Mt)
• About 2000 square miles displaces all of global production. That is 2000 farms. Only 2M acres. This is the size of the Largest Landowners
• 40% global steel production is from recycled sources

OSE Workflow

Sourcing

• Recycling
• Ore?

Refining

• Froth Floatation and other ore methods?
• Direct Reduction , and Charcoal Blast Furnace

• Induction Furnace

• Ironworker

See Also

• Open Source Metallurgy Construction Set