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Green steel from red mud through climate-neutral hydrogen plasma reduction.

Matic Jovičević-KlugIsnaldi R Souza FilhoHauke SpringerChristian AdamDierk Raabe
Published in: Nature (2024)
Red mud is the waste of bauxite refinement into alumina, the feedstock for aluminium production 1 . With about 180 million tonnes produced per year 1 , red mud has amassed to one of the largest environmentally hazardous waste products, with the staggering amount of 4 billion tonnes accumulated on a global scale 1 . Here we present how this red mud can be turned into valuable and sustainable feedstock for ironmaking using fossil-free hydrogen-plasma-based reduction, thus mitigating a part of the steel-related carbon dioxide emissions by making it available for the production of several hundred million tonnes of green steel. The process proceeds through rapid liquid-state reduction, chemical partitioning, as well as density-driven and viscosity-driven separation between metal and oxides. We show the underlying chemical reactions, pH-neutralization processes and phase transformations during this surprisingly simple and fast reduction method. The approach establishes a sustainable toxic-waste treatment from aluminium production through using red mud as feedstock to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from steelmaking.
Keyphrases
  • municipal solid waste
  • carbon dioxide
  • heavy metals
  • life cycle
  • climate change
  • ionic liquid
  • liquid chromatography