Julian Spector of Canary Media reports on Form Energy’s plans to clean up iron and steel production.
- Form Energy, known for developing iron-air batteries for long-duration energy storage, has proposed using their electrochemical process to produce green iron that could decarbonize steelmaking.
- Their technique involves using electricity to reduce iron oxide (rust) into pure metallic iron in an alkaline solution, avoiding the need for fossil fuels and high heat required in traditional ironmaking methods.
- Form’s approach received $1 million in funding from ARPA-E to scale up as it aims to compete on cost with conventional blast furnace production of iron.
- The electrochemical process can potentially integrate directly with variable renewable power generation and operate efficiently at low temperatures compared to fossil-based ironmaking.
“Form’s core product is a grid battery that uses powdered iron for the anode and runs the reduction and oxidation reactions back and forth to charge and discharge. The saying goes that if you wield a hammer, everything looks like a nail; Form’s engineers store energy by reducing iron, so they saw green iron production as another opportunity to apply their energy storage technique.”
Read the full article here.
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