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Microwave Steelmaking
Makarand writes "Researchers at the Michigan Technological University are working on a
low-cost
steelmaking process which uses microwaves to heat iron ore instead of conventional heating.
Their steelmaking facility was made of magnetrons from six household microwaves wired together and an electric arc furnace. When fed iron oxide and coal, the microwave energy could reduce the iron ore to iron within minutes and the electric
arc furnace smelted the iron and coal into steel. The steel industry is taking a closer
look at this new process which could cut steel production costs by upto 50%."
Does anyone think any of the savings will be passed down to consumers?
Oh and with lousy workers I mean that americans will keep on insisting on being paid more then a starving wage and refuse to do double shifts. The rotters.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Not nessicarly. Most third world countries don't have reliable power. If you have molten iron, and the power goes out, you have to empty everything fast, because once it solidifies it will crack the containers when you try to remove it. (as it cools it contracts, when you melt it, it expands. think frozen water)
Remember too that energy is cheap in the US. I doupt any third world country really has a major advantage there. Perhaps Iceland, with all their geo-thermo, they have already locked up aluminium, but are they third world?
There are a lot of issues. If you want a custom shape from your supplier it is much easier to get it from one in your town than a third world nation. If your factory is automatied enough, labor costs aren't significant anyway, (it is all skilled labor which you would have to import to the third world country) so what is the point in moving.
Most of the "japanese" car manufactors have factorys in the US. You can have a profitable manufactoring company in the US, if you run it right.
If you bursh up on your thermodynamics you will notice that simple fuels (say coal) cannot reach 50% efficency). Iron melts close to the flame tempature of some fuels. Run the calculations of efficency, and 50% looks really good.
Of course real industry uses electric a lot. However resisance (ohms law), while in theory 100% efficent has downsides. The heating elements are fragil, and that is assuming you can find one that doesn't melt at less than the tempature of liquid iron. Typically carbon arc furances are used, which means you replace carbon rods once in a while.
Induction heating is common in industry. I'm not sure where, or for what purposes, but I know it is used. I don't know how it compares to this process.
Induction heating is not used in bulk steelmaking. It's very useful for heating materials in a vacuum and for heating the surface skin of steel. By only heating the surface skin, you can harden it and leave the insides tough and non-brittle. Or "crunchy on the outside, chewy in the center" as a metalurgical engineer would say.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
You are way off base. Big energy consuming operations ANYWHERE in the world supply their own power. Even Ford's assembly plants have their own on-site power plant. Also, if you knew what you were talking about, you would know that there are huge electricity consuming industries in many third world countries, such as refineries and in particular aluminum (bauxite) handling in Venezuela.
The fact is, building a steel mill is a bigger endeavor than building a power plant. If you build a steel mill, you can build a power plant.
The real advantage of this may be that it may enable smaller steel mills, not necessarily more efficient ones.
Since this technique is a lot more efficient than using conventional methods, how feasible would it be to make a portable steelmaking machine? Say.. that was small enough to be lifted by rocket to another planet.
The idea being, of course, that you feed rock and electricity in one end of a smallish box and get steel out the other. Would this be useful for making a base on the moon or mars? Huh?
I seem to recall that you have to blow hot air or oxygen through the melt to burn out excess carbon to convert the pig iron to steel. Maybe he hasn't gotten that far developing the process.
If indeed he has found a way to go from ore straight to steel, this is a pretty valuable process. There just isn't enough information to tell.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Right, unfortunatly water is a strange thing, acting very different from most other materials. It hits the minimun density at about 4 degrees C. That is it contracts as it cools until it gets 4, then it starts expanding.
Iron does in fact contract when it solidifies. As it contracts it pulls more and more iron (okay a very tiny amount more) in. When you heat something containing solid iron, that iron needs to go someplace. Heat from the bottom of a container, and the bottom will melt first, and expand, but there is solid iron above it, so something has to give. Often that is the container.
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets
Not nessesarily. Assembly plants and factories don't need much energy compared to smelting/ore refining operations, and I don't think on-site generation is practical for those purposes. I know the big aluminum plants in Oregon are fed off of the grid because they were shut down during the energy crisis in Cali. a while back. All the spare energy from hydro power on the Columbia river was diverted south. Backups were not there because there were no economical way to supply the power needed. Keep in mind that the U.S. probobly has cheaper energy rates for industrial uses than most third world countries because of our existing infastructure and generating plants. Even if you could build a power plant next to the steel mill, will that be cheaper than getting power off the grid in the U.S.?
Why not? As long as there aren't sharp points to it, you can put spoons and such in a wave. I usualy put a spoon in a cup when I heat it in a wave. (Supposingly this prevents that parts in the liquid superheat and splash hot liquid around when disturbed.)
Though to be fair "good things" in this case means fewer steelworkers will lose their jobs instead of all of them. Still, it's improvement, and who knows? If our costs really drop by 50%, demand very well could increase enough to justify keeping all the old workers around.
Bzzt wrong. You see, in $under-industrialized-nation the workers will work for $0.50 an hour in this Microwave Steel Foundry. Just like they do in the current foundries.
Your assertion that reducing costs "here" will keep jobs "here... not so, those technologies will just be used abroad to reduce *THERE* costs as well.
As long as there is inequality in labour standards, pay-rates, environmental-standards, taxes, health and safety standards, etc etc etc capitalists will seek to exploit the weakest standards -- this is why 'free trade' does not work.
On the other hand, Fair Trade is possible by realizing this reality and seeing that these things are considered in the economy, else, the lowest 'standards' will always get the job.... this is called "The Race to the Bottom." Its what is going to slap America's middle class in the face shortly.