SBIR Phase I: A novel carbon dioxide emission free iron-making process

小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是为钢铁行业实现环境可持续、无二氧化碳排放的工艺。 该新工艺在相对较低的温度下运行，允许该工艺按需启动和停止，从而实现与间歇性可再生资源（如太阳能和风能）的无缝集成。 该方法可以使用广泛可用的低品位铁矿石，由于杂质含量高，目前不常用于炼钢。此外，该工艺仅使用铁矿石和可再生电力作为原料。因此，该加工厂很容易与采矿作业共处一地，以消除运输铁矿石的物流和碳排放，支持国内钢铁和炼钢行业。该小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将验证一种新型无二氧化碳排放炼铁工艺的可行性。所提出的解决方案利用间歇性可再生能源通过电化学过程将铁矿石转化为铁金属。 该项目的目标是：1）开发一种将固体铁矿石转化为液体电解质的方法，该方法适用于后续步骤中的有效铁提取; 2）在连续闭环过程中证明材料再生的高法拉第效率; 3）构建一种新型电化学装置，其总比能耗与传统工艺的能量强度相当。该方法结合了对铁矿石溶解动力学的基本理解和新型电化学再生方案，以增强铁矿石溶解并实现有效的铁提取。该项目将寻求了解关键工艺变量和铁矿石杂质对性能和稳定性的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to enable an environmentally sustainable, carbon-dioxide emission-free process for the iron and steel industry. The novel process operates at relatively low temperatures allowing the process to start and stop on demand, thereby enabling seamless integration with intermittent renewable resources, like solar and wind energy. The process can use widely available low-grade iron ores not commonly used in steelmaking today due to high impurity content. Furthermore, the process uses only iron ore and renewable electricity as a feedstock. Thus, the process plant is easily co-located with mining operations to eliminate the logistics and carbon emissions from shipping iron ore, supporting the domestic iron and steelmaking industries. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will validate the feasibility of a novel carbon dioxide emission-free iron-making process. The proposed solution leverages intermittent renewable energy to convert iron ore to iron metal via an electrochemical process. The objectives of this project are to 1) develop a process to convert the solid iron ore to a liquid electrolyte suitable for efficient iron extraction in a subsequent step, 2) demonstrate high faradaic efficiency for materials regeneration in a continuous closed-loop process, 3) build a novel electrochemical device with total specific energy consumption comparable to the energy intensity of the conventional process. The approach combines a fundamental understanding of iron ore dissolution kinetics with a novel electrochemical regeneration scheme to enhance iron ore dissolution and enable efficient iron extraction. The project will seek to understand the impact of key process variables and iron ore impurities on performance and stability. It is anticipated that the core innovation will lead to a novel process of reducing iron ore to high-purity iron for steelmaking.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.