Why steel is our most important (and dirtiest) metal

It's a wonder material we use every day – and single-handedly responsible for more than 7% of climate change. But the solutions to clean up the steel industry are still in the early stages. How can we make green steel?

Credits:
Reporter: Ajit Niranjan
Video Editor: Nils Reinecke
Supervising editor: Kiyo Dörrer

We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

#PlanetA #Steel #Hydrogen

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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:38 Where steel comes from
02:09 Why steelmaking is dirty
04:01 How hydrogen helps
07:54 Can't we just recycle?
09:16 Capturing carbon
11:04 Conclusion

[DWPlanetA]

Do you believe it will work to make steel really green?

[lacolo]

You've got the Steelmaking process a bit mixed up here.. At 2:54 you say that the reduction of Iron Ore with Coal produces pure iron, after which the carbon is added.
In reality, the molten iron produced in the blast furnace has a too high Carbon content, which is then burned out, typically with Basic Oxygen Steelmaking or a Electric arc furnace, reducing the Carbon content to a desirable level.
This was the problem that the Bessemer process, patented in 1856, solved, and resulted in a great increase of Steel production.

[stefandietmann]

The future of everything is: consume less! Reuse!

[ArthursHD]

First thought was "If you replace it with titanium, aluminum, fiberglass it would be far worse at that scale."

It is greener not to have a car 🚗 regardless of what it is made of.

[SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

When I did the research for my video on Hydrogen Fuel I was shocked to find out that it might be used to make steel in the future!

Thanks so much for doing a deep dive on the subject! This answered a lot of the questions that I’ve had ever since doing that first video.

[tonysoviet]

5:41 This is EXACTLY how I imagine a Swedish steel maker looks like lol. Viking's steel is the best!

[bmanpura]

Recycling iron is very critical for the industry, because steel is massively reusable - the ratio requirement depends on the steel's specification. Impurities is assumed, so virgin material will be added.

Also, one step at a time for CCS and zero emission - start somewhere, anywhere, and improve from there. Assuming CCS can be attached everywhere is as futile as assuming others habits can be attached to your life easily - you have to do maintenance and adjustments daily. But do start somewhere.

Also, hot water as a byproduct of steel making..? Interesting.

[hippe]

Green energy doesn't have to be coming from renewables it can be also produced in nuclear reactors

[lukenfoci]

1:19 this statement is wrong as carbon does not make steel more prone to rust. It is the oposite - more carbon you have, it will rust quicker/easier. You need other additives to make stell rust resistant, such as nickel and you need around 12% of it.

[ZarlanTheGreen]

Iron is *_NOT_* stronger than bronze! The reason that Europeans switched to iron, was because it was far more cheap and abundant and, more significantly, because the sources and infrastructure for bronze making, mostly collapsed at the time. In China, which didn't have that, iron didn't take over. You had some gradual use of cheap/abundant iron, along the far superior bronze, until good and proper steel, which was genuinely better than bronze, was developed.

[jvalentine]

Steel is not a dirty metal it is actually less polluting than aluminum is, steel rusts away and becomes part of the soil. What is dirty is the steel smelting process and that's mans fault not the actual metals fault . Don't let environmentalists tell you lies about steel . Aluminum uses massive amounts of electricity while that appears clean at the smelter that electricity probably comes from coal fired power stations in many places and no greener than steel smelters . There is cleaner ways to make steel but many have just closed shop and sent their jobs overseas rather than invest in better ways .

[titleloanman]

People need to stop exclusively showing windmills and solar panels every time they mention green energy and start showing nuclear. That is the real solution.

[joeblack]

For me most of the issue is due to things just not being made well, and to last. The biggest saving will always be the item you do not need to replace for decades, or centuries. This is where I really see additive manufacturing shining in the future. A company that makes only shovel blades might decide it's better to design shovel blades so that they need to be replaced in a few years of medium use. But a company that produces anything made from ultra high quality, best for purpose alloy, steel in small volumes, profitably, can afford to make every single shovel blade as robust as possible. Because there will always be something else that people want. Some other item apart from shovel blades if they really ever reach the point where nobody needs a shovel blade anymore. Especially if it is vertically integrated with recycling capacity.
Material optimisation through AI empowered CAD could be another big saver. A million cars, with optimally designed chassis using a few kg of steel less each = millions of kgs of steel saved. The savings from smaller cars (mentioned) would obviously be even more dramatic. The two options together - Even better.

[Alvin-mywj]

Problem is it is easier to complain than buying smaller cars and reduced consumption.

[zaurenstoates]

Missed where nuclear could fit into this. High temp fast breeder reactors can make hydrogen through thermochemical means, which raises efficiency. Those same high temperatures can be used to drive the steel making process too.

Utilizing fast breeder reactors our current "spent" nuclear fuel could be reused. There is 3x the energy content of the world's oil reserves locked in the high level nuclear "waste" around the world.

[micco]

Different take. When we are truly seeing suffering and deprivation from increased fuel prices, maybe saying the solution is government increasing taxes is a bit cruel.

[eaaeeeea]

Since the beginning of the video I was waiting for the SSAB fossil free steel example to come up. 5:35 I was delightfully surprised on how pumped mr. Per Adolfson was about the steel delivery to Volvo! As a citizen of a small nation myself, I can relate how good it feels when we achieve something that will impact the whole world like the Swedish SSAB did!

[knutzzl]

One massive side of the steel pollution not covered in this video is of course the mining of the ore

[stickynorth]

A hopeful intro video but I wish there were more real world examples... Guess these companies will just have to prove it works in the real world....

[scottcarr]

Some of the people here have never worked in the Steel Industry like me, they are new out of University by the looks of it, and have a vague idea of how it is done but never actually done it, or at least seen it done first hand. To me they sound more like climate Activists than actual scientists. Making steel from scrap is the preferred method, but because of the Contaminants in scrap, you do need to add pure steel to the mix to bring up the Metalurgical numbers to normal, or you have very weak steel, you need approximately 0.2 % carbon to make Mild steel, or 0.18 % carbon which is called "free machining steel", anything less is basically rubbish. Making Integrated Steel using Hydrogen sounds good, but yes, Frightfully expensive. Trying to use only renewables to make the Electricity to run the Electrolyses system, to make Hydrogen sounds like wishful thinking. You can't tell mother nature when to blow big windy days so that you can make Hydrogen. You are now talking Gigawatts of Electricity needed, we still haven't got Nuclear Fusion, the amount of Nuclear Fission is still being reduced, Tell me, other than covering the rest of the planet in Solar panels or Wind turbines, how the hell are you going to get ENOUGH ELECTRICITY.