What are the Foundation Industries Flashcards
What are the Foundation Industries?
- The Foundation Industries (metals, ceramics, glass, chemicals, paper and cement) produce 28 tonnes of materials per year in the UK
- But in doing so are by the far the UK’s biggest industrial polluters: around 50 milion tonnes of CO₂ per year, of 10% of the total CO₂ emitted by UK homes and businesses
What change has to happen to the foundation industries?
- If we are to meet our Paris Climate Change Agreement to reduce our CO₂ emissions by 80%, a transformational change is needed by these industries in how materials are sourced and processed, and the types of products manufactured
- Developing a resource and energy efficient foundation industry will also help anchor production in the UK through increased competitiveness
How do the Foundation Industries underpin sustainability?
- Removing ‘no poverty’ from the employment of these industries
- These industries generate the infrastructure to generate food and clean water - ‘no hunger + clean water and sanitation’
- These industries create the components required to create renewable technologies - ‘climate action’
What is the immediate cost of steel manufacturing?
- The heat required to make molten iron from a blast furnace in steel production is huge
- Hence requiring a lot of energy from gas
- 2224 kg-CO₂/ton-HM (steel)
What is the process of making Iron in a modern blast furnace?
- Large cooking ovens, filled with ground-up iron oxide and carbon (coke - reductant)
- We fire this mixture by burning a lot of gas, driving the reduction of iron oxide, into Fe(0)
- Then an oxygen furnace is used to oxidise all of the other ‘stuff’ which comes out with the Iron - gives rise to the slag, which floats to the top and can be skimmed off
What is the largest ccontributor to integrated BF-BOF steel making CO₂ emissions is driven by…
…the requirement of carbon (usually coke) as the reductant
Are there any clean-up opportunities for the Steel making industry?
- Using something called the electric arc furnace
- It is a great pot which is heated so the material is molten
- No need for the chemical reductant coke, instead electrons are delivered from clean energy using large electrodes
- The number of CO₂ equivaence in its generation using electrodes rather than coal is reduced (842 vs 2225)
What is a drawback for the electric arc furnace?
- It cannot make all of the grades of steel that you can in a blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace
- i.e. high grade steel needed for specific purposes cannot be made using a simple electric arc furnace
Hydrogen can also be used as a reductant in the electric arc furnace, what is the catch with this?
- The greeness will depend on where the hydrogen comes from, i.e. most hydrogen comes from stream reforming using methane
- Using hydrogen coming from a renewable feedstck like solar photovoltaics
- Or wet biomass could be used as the hydrogen equivalent
How do Iron and Steelmaking relate to the sustainable development goals?
- Iron and Steelmaking are responsible for around 7% of global CO₂ emissions
- Steel industry emissions need significant reductions to meet UK net zero targets
What are three main ways (according to Green Steels POSTNOTE) to net zero for steelmaking?
- Greater use of electric arc furnaces and recycled (scrap steel)
- Direct reduced iron for using green hydrogen and carbon capture
- Utilisation and storage (CCUS)
What are some challenges for decarbonising the steel industry?
- High investment cost for technology
- Rsing electricity prices
- The need for hydrogen and CCUS networks
Cement production produces approx. 7% of man-made CO₂ emissions
Outline the production process?
- Rawmix - Limestone, Clay and/or shale ground wet
- Calcinein rotary kiln (up to 1450°C) - clinker production
- Grinding with Gypsum to producefine powder
Where are the most CO₂ emission produced during the cement production process?
- Cement manufacture contributes CO₂ to the atmosphere when calcium carbonate is heated, producing lime and carbon doxide
- CO₂ is also produced by buring fossil fuels that provide the heat for the cement manufacture process
- (~900 kg of CO₂ per 1000kg of cement produced)
What is Gypsum?
Layers of calcium sulohate sandwiching a double layer of water molecules
(Blue - Ca; Yellow - S; Red - O; Pink - H)
This can be synthetically made from calcium carbonate and sulfur oxide
Glass is a ubiquitos class of materials that finds application across construction, transport, and high tech sectors
What is the precursor to most glasses is…
…abundant (SiO₂)ₙ
The float-glass process is used industrially to make glass
How does it work?
- It uses a large furnace so the raw materials are charged in at one end of the furnace
- They are belended with any dopants/mateirals use to deliever the required properties and formed as a melt in the melting furnace - 1600 °C
- Then refined + remove bubbles using vibrations and cooling - 1100-1300 °C
- This material is then distributed across a float bath on melted tin to ensure width and thickness
- And slowly cooled to allow annealing
- Before it is then cut for our use
What are some primary challenges with glass making?
- The fuels for furnaces - high energy demand
- Processing methods
- Transportation of glass products
What are the benefits of recycling glass?
- Recycling glass saves natural resorces
- Recycling glass saves energy
- Recycling glass reduces CO₂
Within these foundation industries, water is heavily used
What is the significance of this?
- Appox 32L of water is used to produce a 2g microchip; a microchip manufacturing plant can easily use five million litres of water per day - this is highly purifed, deionised water
- However, in some parts of the world, people still do not have access to safe, clean drinking water
How much water is used in steel manufacturing?
- 6 tons of water per ton of steel (US & EU)
- 20-60 tons of water per ton of steel (E.Asia)
How much water is used in water consumption in paper and pulping?
- 225 tons of water per ton of paper (EU & US)
- 450 tons of water per ton of paper (E. Asia
Approx x% of the global population (>y bn) face severe water scarcity by 2050
x = 50%
y = 4 bn
How can we overcome some of the challenges associated with the foundational industries?
- Adoption of circularity of technical materials will reduce reprocess energy and give significant impacts in terms of sustainability
