New Chinese technology may change the economics of smelting worldwide.
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The technology of primary steelmaking has always been based on smelting. Heat iron ores into a melt in a chemically reducing atmosphere, and the result is elemental iron, the basic building block of all ferrous alloys. And that smelting process hasn’t changed in principle for hundreds of years, with coal derived coke providing both the heat and the chemistry needed to make iron in commercial quantities. But it’s a batch process, and to scale it economically requires large equipment and investment.
A radically new technology called flash steelmaking has been developed in China, which reacts iron ore powders explosively, in seconds, compared to hours for conventional techniques using blast furnaces. If practical, the technique could make steelmaking a profitable business at small and large scale, everywhere
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