Dutch Brewery Burns Iron as a Clean, Recyclable Fuel (newatlas.com) 127
Many industries use heat-intensive processes that generally require the burning of fossil fuels, but a surprising green fuel alternative is emerging in the form of metal powders. Ground very fine, cheap iron powder burns readily at high temperatures, releasing energy as it oxidizes in a process that emits no carbon and produces easily collectable rust, or iron oxide, as its only emission. From a report: If burning metal powder as fuel sounds strange, the next part of the process will be even more surprising. That rust can be regenerated straight back into iron powder with the application of electricity, and if you do this using solar, wind or other zero-carbon power generation systems, you end up with a totally carbon-free cycle. The iron acts as a kind of clean battery for combustion processes, charging up via one of a number of means including electrolysis, and discharging in flames and heat. Recently, Swinkels Family Brewers in the Netherlands has become the first business in the world to put this process to work at an industrial scale. The company has been working with the Metal Power Consortium and researchers at TU Eindhoven to install a cyclical iron fuel system at its Brewery Bavaria that's capable of providing all the heat necessary for some 15 million glasses of beer a year.
Rust bucket. (Score:2, Insightful)
Finally a way to burn our rusty vehicles.
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You misunderstood, rust is the product of combustion.
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Finally a way to burn our perfectly good vehicles?
Don't you need carbon to reduce iron oxide? (Score:2)
Don't you need carbon to strip oxygen from iron oxide? Bauxite can be processed into aluminum but I didn't know it was possible with iron.
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Using an electrolysis method for reducing iron oxide to iron metal has been in the works for about two decades at least.
You can also use hydrogen to a reducing agent, which I believe is a slightly newer process than electrolysis.
So no, you no longer need carbon to make iron - it can be an entirely green process powered by renewable energy.
=Smidge=
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Hydrogen as a reducing agent sounds like an invitation to a whole host of metallurgical problems, but I guess they worked out the kinks.
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In fairness, hydrogen can diffuse into steel and make it brittle. This is why you basically never see pressure vessels that contain hydrogen made out of steel.
The trick to reducing iron oxides with hydrogen is, similar to the process with coal, to make sure all of the hydrogen is gone.
=Smidge=
Re:Don't you need carbon to reduce iron oxide? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Don't you need carbon to reduce iron oxide? (Score:4, Insightful)
"If it's powered by Coal or LNG it's just adding extra steps to make people feel good."
That isn't strictly speaking true. With that attitude you could never fix much of anything because you can rarely fix everything in a single step. There is definitely value in being green ready without regard for the fuel being used by the electricity producer.
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No, their attitude is the correct one. We need to look at the whole chain and make sure that in the end we are not making things worse. We need to look at life-cycle CO2 production, not just individual steps.
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No, their attitude is the correct one. We need to look at the whole chain and make sure that in the end we are not making things worse. We need to look at life-cycle CO2 production, not just individual steps.
In the long run, yes. In the short run, if you have to build a new furnace and you can choose a system that can be powered by electricity or one that is powered by coke, it's better to choose the former even if right now your electricity comes from burning coal. It's easy to incrementally replace electrical power production with renewable sources.
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We need to look at the whole chain
Very few groups of people are in a position to control the whole chain. So it comes back to not, the attitude is not correct. You don't abandon the idea because your upstream part of the chain isn't ready for it. Just like you don't abandon an idea because the downstream part isn't. Otherwise we can argue about chickens and eggs until the cows come home.
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Controlling the carbon content in steel was the breakthrough that made the Bessemer process practical, patented by Robert Forester Mushet who sold it to Bessemer. Though these days in a further refinement you blow pure oxygen through the pig iron rather than air. Something that was not practical till the middle of the 20th century.
You start of by removing *ALL* of the carbon then adding back what you need. As you blow oxygen through the molten pig iron you any residual carbon from the smelting process is tu
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Why doesn't iron oxidize as well? It is molten hot anyway so it should be quite reactive. Or it is and it is forming slag which is later removed?
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For almost all steelmaking the slag protects the melt pool from atmospheric oxygen. Oddly, you add additional oxygen (by bubbling) to reduce impurities. The oxygen preferentially combines/oxidizes with e.g. Carbon and it bubbles out of the melt pool or becomes part of the slag.
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You normally have to use charcoal or bituminous coal, but if you dig down to the magma sea, or if you embark on a volcano so magma is available near the surface, then you can use a magma smelter to do it for free.
Iron Brew? (Score:5, Funny)
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Scots dont' brew.
They distill.
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Alimunium (Score:2)
Al might be even better. It is known as 'solidified electricity', and that electrical energy can be released later on by burning the powdered form.
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Drastically more expensive.
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Drastically more expensive.
But not because of the aluminium ore cost. It is more expensive because of the required energy to refine it. If you want to use it for energy storing then it is a plus. Moreover it is lighter and therefore easier to transport
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You can do Zinc and Iron electrolysis in an aqueous electrolyte, Aluminium not so much.
Totally carbon free... (Score:2, Troll)
Save for the carbon output used to actually manufacture the renewable power system's materials...
The efficency sucks (Score:2)
Wasting 60% of energy doesn't seem like a great way to store or use it. I'm sure if you compared a carbon capture tech, it would come in well ahead of metal powder combustion. The other problem is mass Iron weighs much more than carbon or hydrogen and will cost more to transport. On top of that why they wouldn't just use an electric heater, which costs very little for transporting energy and doesn't incur a 60% loss is beyond me.
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Electric actually does a poor job for industrial purposes and when combined with renewable energy creates the need for the battery.
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No it doesn't, especially in norway where they have a lot of hydroelectric they can adjust the amount of power with water storage. And batteries are way more efficent than burning metal. Metal is 40% round trip, batteries are 70% to 90% depending on the battery. So even batteries are more efficient then metal combustion.
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Lithium batteries don't scale well, the cost and material use per TWh are both too large.
A Zinc or Iron air battery which you can mechanically charge/discharge with metal oxide and metal might do better on both, albeit at lower round trip efficiency. For heating it might then be easier to just burn the metal.
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It is actually not that bad. Pumped storage (the gold standard) is at 70% to 80%. Battery storage is a bit better but vastly more expensive. The really nice thing about this system is no storage losses, vast scalability and easy transport of the stored energy if you do not reduce the iron locally.
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This would be true for a lot of applications, but not for a brewery.
Breweries need a massive amount of power for short periods of time. Boiling is a very energy intense process, but they only do that for a couple hours a day, unless they're a giant macrobrewery.
And a lot of small to medium sized breweries only brew a few times a week.
So they have a lot of downtime in which to store power for the short, energy intense periods where they need it.
Conversion for Glasses of Beer / Year? (Score:2)
I know that writers try to make things relevant but why do they always come up with strange measurements with no frame of reference?
I'd be curious to know how many BTUs (or other standard units) of heat is being produced - is this a process that might be practical for a house, a car or is it basically a candle?
you have to grind up the iron first (Score:2)
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There are multiple industrial processes to produce metal powders, grinding is not one of them:
o Atomization
o Centrifugal atomization
o Electrolysis
o Chemical
o Solid state reduction
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Ball mill.
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The methods I listed usually produce a powder that's quite pure, but ball mill works if you aren't that concerned about the produced powder being slightly contaminated by the balls wearing down.
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What if the balls are iron too?
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The balls are usually made of chrome steel (for durability reasons), which contains a lot of different elements which may not be what you want in the produced powder.
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Missing the point.
Energy efficiency is not it.
Look at the sky. It's not like we're gonna use that fusion reactor up anytime soon.
I think this non-argument was spread by the fossil fuel industry, to mislead and destroy.
So do they actually DO electrolysis? (Score:2)
That in theory high efficiency electrolysis is possible is nice, but unlike the iron burner I don't see any pictures of an electrolysis plant.
Do they just use good old dirty reduction using coal to get back iron from the iron oxide?
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Well guess which one some *Danes* might use, whose whole point os to become 'green', genius! :)
This is not American culture, where it is expected to lie and cheat on ALL the things. ;)
15 million glasses of beer on the wall (Score:2)
Oblig. Bad Car Analogy (Score:2)
My car has slowly been burning iron since 1979.
This story is way cool! (Score:2)
One problem .. (Score:2)
Iron ore has to be mined and purified.
Anybody know a way to do that doesn't invole burning copious
quantities of fossil fuel?
Even if you recycle old car bodies, etc. that process
will require energy.
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dynamite and electicity?
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Wat?
The entire damn point here is that you re-use the iron, not mine it.
And if you really need more, there nothing stopping you from mining it with electric machines. Or machines powered by iron oxyde turned into iron with solar power right outside the mine.
So a metal-air battery, essentially ... (Score:2)
Why not go with aluminimimum instead? (Called 'lumnum in Cody's land. :)
Still a quite good form of energy storage. Nice!
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From TFS:
The iron acts as a kind of clean battery for combustion processes, charging up via one of a number of means including electrolysis, and discharging in flames and heat.
They may need more energy than their renewables can provide in a short time. By using a battery, they can have smaller renewable generation systems. This iron powder is presumably less environmentally toxic than lithium mining.
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Lithium is fine, it is one of the most abundant materials, and do not actually cause an environmental impact. (Or it should not in theory).
But Cobalt on the other hand... is a very different story altogether:
https://www.theguardian.com/gl... [theguardian.com]
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A brewery needs something like 3 hrs of intense heating for a 5-8 hr brew day. If you can store your solar across that period and release it as needed, you'll need less total capacity.
The big question is how the finances compare to just buying a bigass battery pack.
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Use the powder as part of storage.
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The most common source of lithium recovery is evaporation of lithium brine. If everything goes well and the operator is responsible, this kind of operation can be quite safe. The leach pond, however, is nasty, and there have been leaks from such ponds into rivers in countries with weak environmental regulation (e.g. China).
As the world market for lithium has expanded, so have complaints of contaminated surface water, fish kills, and livestock poisonings. As it rises further, expect more and more shady co
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Sure, sourcing Cobalt from countries with actual environmental laws would be awesome, but an even better route would be to use batteries that don't require Cobalt. There are alternate anodes currently being developed to make this a reality: https://www.wired.com/story/th... [wired.com]
Re:regenerated straight back into iron powder (Score:5, Funny)
using solar, wind or other zero-carbon power generation systems
Why not just power your plant directly with those, then?
Solar panels and wind turbines don't burn as cleanly. :-)
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Re:regenerated straight back into iron powder (Score:5, Insightful)
Electricity is a terrible way to produce industrial heat. This could actually be pretty useful.
That is incorrect. Electrical induction has replaced coke based metal processing for decades now. The industry did not say, "hey! let us use the most expensive way possible to melt metal," one day and just stick with it.
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Electric induction is used in metal-to-metal mini-mills.
Coke is used in oxide to metal forges.
Re: regenerated straight back into iron powder (Score:2)
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Electricity is a great way to produce industrial heat at midday when there's excess solar power, or in strong winds when there's excess wind power.
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at midday when there's excess solar power, or in strong winds when there's excess wind power.
The Netherlands gets 80% of its electricity from fossil fuels.
Excess renewable energy is something that almost never happens.
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Not right now. But given that renewable energy in Western countries (excluding hydro) is currently doubling every 5-10 years (1 [wikipedia.org] 2 [wikipedia.org] 3 [energy.gov]), excess renewable energy will become common pretty soon.
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Excess renewable energy is something that almost never happens.
There's plans for using exactly that in Australia, to generate hydrogen. The first target is to suplement LNG with Hydrogen, then eventually export Hydrogen gas as self contained energy.
https://www.greentechmedia.com... [greentechmedia.com]
Mind you there's not much excess around as yet, but we've had entire states powered by wind only power at times, with all other renewables + dispatchable as excess. With all the renewable supply projects inbound, that can only increase.
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According to the article this seems to be aimed more as a replacement fuel for systems that already utilize burning fossil combustibles. I suppose it could be cheaper to convert to this than transition a system to direct electrical heating elements. Also the iron powder burns very hot (1800C) so that could have applications in itself, I don't know myself how difficult it is to use something like resistive elements to reach those types of temperatures.
It does also say the whole process is theoretically 40%
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40% actually isn't all that bad.
"What is the efficiency of a steam turbine?
Condensing steam turbines have an efficiency in the range e = 36 to 42%. From this it follows that only a small portion of heat released in the process of fuel combustion is transformed into effective work. Turbine units for power and steam generation have higher overall efficiency."
http://www.thermopedia.com/content/1151/
Re:regenerated straight back into iron powder (Score:4, Insightful)
40% actually isn't all that bad.
They are producing heat. 40% is terrible. They should be getting near 100% efficiency, because any inefficiency in the process produces ... heat.
"What is the efficiency of a steam turbine?
Steam turbines are about 40% efficient at producing mechanical energy. The other 60% is heat.
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I'd wonder if the waste heat can go to pre-warming more iron oxide for electrolysis (it's done at 1600F), improving the efficiency of this as a storage method.
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Whoops, I misread what you were saying and just repeated it. LOL sorry.
Replaces electrical arcs. BTW, sparklers are iron (Score:2)
> direct electrical heating elements. Also the iron powder burns very hot (1800C) so that could have applications in itself, I don't know myself how difficult it is to use something like resistive elements to reach those types of temperatures.
When you want very high temperatures, such as for melting metal, the resistive elements of choice are gasses such as air, nitrogen, or argon. In other words, an arc just like welding. A big spark. Easy peasy.
On another note, if you've ever used old fashioned spark
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Others have pointed out this alleviates the need for batteries in the renewables cycle but it also is portable.
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Portable.
Energy per unit weight or volume for lithium vs iron.
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using solar, wind or other zero-carbon power generation systems
Why not just power your plant directly with those, then?
Playing the Devil's Advocate for a moment, but why not just power Teslas directly with those then? As in, get rid of the battery and just slap a solar panel or wind turbine on top. What about all of the other electric devices, appliances, and vehicles that you don't keep plugged in 24/7? Why not power them directly from renewables too? Why? Because once you ask that question more broadly, you realize that there are a variety of use cases and any number of reasons why people might need to rely on something o
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why not just power Teslas directly with those then?
Because Teslas move around.
Breweries do not.
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While true, that's missing the point I was trying to make, which was that it's rarely the case that we want to power anything from renewables without at least some form of accompanying energy storage. That Teslas move around is why they need energy storage, but there are physical constraints driving the need for energy storage at breweries as well. Sure, they're different, but that's a separate discussion that has no bearing on what I was talking about.
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That Teslas move around is why they need energy storage, ... at night, through tunnels, in skyscraper shadows, under overpasses and trees, ...
Also because they need enough energy that they couldn't carry that much panel area with them. (Imagine a Tesla at 70 MPH on a mountain highway with a solar umbrella larger than a four bedroom ranch house's roof.)
Also because they scavenge energy when they slow down, to use later to speed up again.
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The brewery is on the grid. Batteries make no sense whatsoever.
If they have surplus power, feed it into the grid to offset fossil fuel consumption elsewhere.
When they have a power deficit, pull from the grid.
All the batteries accomplish is to quadruple the cost of the system while consuming unnecessary resources.
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There's a lot of use cases where you might need more energy at once than your (green) energy source can deliver but not so often that using your (green) energy source to regenerate your high energy fuel is a big inconvenience.
It's no different than solar power and electric cars, really. In this case the iron powder is basically a battery. Nobody expects to drive their Tesla with solar panels on the roof, they expect it to have stored energy available.
This specific use case (beer brewing) may not be the po
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If heat is your requirement and you have hydrogen or iron powder on hand, then burning those things is going to provide the highest efficiency. If you're out of hydrogen or iron powder, and you have excess electricity, then producing more hydrogen or iron oxide in addition to heating with electricity will provide the highest efficiency. If you convert all your electricity to hydrogen or iron powder, only to burn it for heat, you're definitely doing it wrong.
Glad someone finally mentioned hydrogen. They are
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using solar, wind or other zero-carbon power generation systems Why not just power your plant directly with those, then?
This is another way to store zero-carbon energy when production is in excess. It doesn't have to be batteries.
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using solar, wind or other zero-carbon power generation systems
Why not just power your plant directly with those, then?
What they claim to have is a process for reforming the oxide into iron by using fluctuating sources of power. Because brewing needs a constant source, burning the iron, this would effectively make a fluctuating power source useful in brewing. Let's see what the efficiency of the process comes out to be.
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still would need batteries; this replaces the batteries
You don't need batteries unless the brewery is on an isolated island.
Just feed the excess power into the grid where it will offset fossil fuel use elsewhere. Then when you need more power than your renewables can provide, pull from the grid.
The process described in TFA is either badly garbled by an incompetent journalist or the brewery is run by idiots.
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Just feed the excess power into the grid where it will offset fossil fuel use elsewhere. Then when you need more power than your renewables can provide, pull from the grid.
Well, except this probably solves the problem of shifting power from cheap season (summer or winter depending on where you live) to the more expensive seasons. Iron can be put in a big heap in a dry place and should sit there reasonably fine for six months without problem. Why not convert back into electricity? TFA says they plan to do that, which would be a good way to reuse old coal fired power stations, however if you are using the heat directly you get rid of one stage of conversion and so you increa
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The grid itself benefits from batteries, see Australia. Iron powder has a high energy density and the tech doesn't depend on any scarce resources or generate toxic waste.
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This is Denmark. They don't get permanent California sun or non-stop wind.
This is a buffer, like with a PC, so the CD burning isn't ruined by a buffer underflow! (Remember that time?)
Variable cicumstances (Score:2)
The energy source for mining (and nearly everything else) can be electricity. It's all about infrastructure and storage. There's no shortage of sunlight. The issue is getting to there from here.
Re:This is still releasing CO2 into the atmosphere (Score:4, Insightful)
The CO2 from fermentation is compensated by the CO2 adsorbed by the grain when it grows. The iron powder can come from scrap. The mining can be powered by renewables even though it typically isn't today.
Re:This is still releasing CO2 into the atmosphere (Score:5, Insightful)
The CO2 from fermentation is compensated by the CO2 adsorbed by the grain when it grows.
It's even better than that. The growing of the grain takes up more CO2 during the growing cycle than is released due to fermentation so the complete brewing process actually captures CO2. 8^)
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This is the bullshit "mining argument" again. You can claim that any human activity "produces CO2" if it is powered with fossil fuel. As we come off fossil fuel for more processes, this argument goes away.
Or maybe do something progressive, like tax the living snot out of these luxury beverages, then use the tax proceeds to pay people to stay home (UBI).
Leftists will not stop until they have sucked the fun out of everything.
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How about we just ban beer and wine and save ourselves from releasing any CO2?
Well, yes, we could revert back to a pre-agricultural way of life.
Next year when the food runs out we can start burning the corpses and resume modern living again.
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It will stop rusting after all the oxygen in the container is consumed. Some oxygen absorbers (like in a bag of chips) are just iron and a catalyst. And based on the amount of weight iron needs to gain to iron oxide, the iron could absorb an enormous volume of oxygen (so the fuel wouldn't be ruined by some headspace in the container).
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By keeping it in block form so oxide only forms on the surface of the block.
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your stored fuel from rusting into uselessness?
Flood the container with nitrogen.
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Rocket motor.
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Iron powder is also used with specialty cutting torches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Lol, nice rant, but you've entirely missed the boat.
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And the point.
Like mining and making the steel with *electricity*. Obtained e.g. from solar or wind. :)
Which is COMPLETELY FUCKING OBVIOUS AS IT IS THE ENTIRE PREMISE AND BLATANTLY CLEAR TO ANYONE WHO DOES NOT WILLFULL IGNORE IT TO CLING TO HIS STUPID PROGRAMMED IDEOLOGIES.
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dear slashcode: yes, it is like yelling. because it *is* yelling.
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Which ia turned to aluminium again via electrolysis, no?