Steel and other metals, painful for the planet?

Steel is one of the most produced materials in the world, making up appx 2.5% of the U.S. GDP.   It is also currently the most abundant building material available on planet Earth with years of supply already on-hand.  So, pretty important question above, is steel production destructive to our planet?  The short, medium, and long answer to this question are a most definite Yes!  In today's blog we're going to discuss why the manufacturing of steel is so harmful and what's happening in the world to change this.

First, to understand why steel manufacturing is bad for our environment let's first examine how steel is made.   The process  kicks off with the mining of iron-ore minerals.   As we've discussed in previous blogs mining is very damaging to our planet because it includes deforestation and land clearing, the use of noxious chemicals, and an aftermath of dangerous exposure and leakage   Once the iron-ore has been gathered it's then shipped to a steel manufacturing facility for processing.   Once in production the iron-ore is smelted in blast furnaces (at temps up to 3600 degrees F) where the impurities are removed and carbon is added.  The definition of steel is "iron alloyed with carbon, usually less than 1%.  Facilities that carry out these processes are often associated with emission of  high quantities of air pollutants such as hydrogen fluoride, sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, offensive and noxious smoke fumes, vapors, gases, and other toxins.   Of course, it does not end with gases as heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, chromium, cadmium, nickel, copper, and zinc are also exposed.  All in all, the steel production process results in the single most damaging manufacturing process for our planet, that's no joke.

So what's being done?  We've discovered this to be a more complicated question in the world of steel.  Based on our research there isn't much being done unfortunately.  This is a very complex problem that has yet to be solved but there are at least a few people working on it.   MIT's materials chemistry professor Donald Sadoway and assistant professor of metallurgy Antoine ­Allanore have been working on a process called molten oxide electrolysis.  The process would make steel manufacturing emissionless but it is still very much in the R&D phase.  Steel is a completely recyclable material, but to be reformed it must be melted using a heavy omitting furnace.   The unfortunate reality is that in order to maintain our current lifestyles we need steel.  It's not just a building material it's also a key component of our kitchen appliances,  automobiles, and other forms of transporation as well as many of the tools we use everyday. Personally, I feel we should have skyscrapers full of people working on this problem...  With every great problem comes a great solution, let's hope!