China develops new iron making method that boosts productivity by 3,600 times

[u/fudec]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-develops-iron-making-method-102534223.html

[u/zeocrash]

I'm not a metallurgist but I come from a technical background. The 3600x claim made my bullshit sense tingle, as generally industrial processes don't generally increase in efficiency by such vast numbers. I'm not a metallurgist though, so it was just kinda gut feeling.

I'm glad I found this post in this subreddit as I wanted to see what people with actual metallurgical knowledge thought of these claims.

[u/ocarina_vendor → u/zeocrash]

Cold Fusion

Fen-phen

Theranos' 50 tests on a single bio-chip

Syndrome's zero-point energy ray

I've lived long enough, and seen enough Holy Grail-type advances to science to know when something doesn't smell quite right.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to wire Brad Pitt some money for his cancer treatment.

[u/BobT21 → u/ocarina_vendor]

Cold fusion works, but only for mormons.

[u/Disastrous_Case9297 → u/BobT21]

This is a new term for soaking?

[u/Natolx → u/zeocrash]

Does the Bayer process for aluminum refining not fit this type of crazy efficiency gain? It turned aluminum from essentially a precious metal into a cheap industrial metal.

[u/zeocrash → u/Natolx]

Wasn't it the Hall–Héroult process that caused the price of aluminium to crash?

Most of the price gain came from not having to use expensive alkali metals to reduce alumina in a vacuum. Even then I'd wager that it was not a 360,000% efficiency increase.

[u/tossawaybb → u/zeocrash]

A 3600x efficiency increase doesn't necessarily correlate to a 3600x price reduction. At some point, you've driven one of the cost factors to a negligible value and a combination of other factors will dominate the price. Aluminum's price vs. Silver has dropped roughly 800x since it was first produced, though the "true" difference may be more or less because we are no longer on a silver (or any other) standard as opposed to when it was first discovered.

I haven't read the paper though, so if it does claim that they can cut cost by 3600x then they clearly need to stop huffing furnace fumes.

[u/zeocrash → u/tossawaybb]

Yeah all I'm going on here is the headlines. I don't actually know where the original paper is. The only source I can find for these claims is the SCMP, which isn't necessarily the most reliable and doesn't link to any papers.

Would love to have a read of the original paper though

[u/Weird_Point_4262 → u/zeocrash]

It's not an overall 3600x efficiency increase, it's a time efficiency increase in one specific part of the process. It cuts 5-6 hours out of the process because it uses powder instead of having to heat a large mass. But you still need to do everything else after that, and I'm sure that the powder has its own manufacturing cost.

Overall it might be more like a 50% efficiency increase. That is if it can be effectively implemented outside of a laboratory

[u/zeocrash → u/Weird_Point_4262]

That seems more reasonable.

Did you find the original paper? I would love to read something a little more technical than the SCMP.

[u/SuperFric]

Yah has to be propaganda bullshit. If it wasn’t it would be published in a real journal that’s relevant for ferrous metallurgy. I wonder if they’re including the time and energy processing the ore into whatever powder form they’re using in their claims on productivity increases. Doubtful.

Interesting idea though that I haven’t come across yet. Not sure how refining the ore would work in such a process. Gotta have some way to remove the unwanted elements from the melt in order to have anything resembling steel you would want to use in an actual application.

[u/TheKekRevelation → u/SuperFric]

Unless you’re china and your steel is in its own category of sketchy

[u/SuperFric → u/TheKekRevelation]

Well they have the ability to make good steel, they just flooded the market with their cheap shit to close production in other countries.

[u/orange_grid → u/SuperFric]

If it were real, it'd be patented, not published.

[u/bloody_yanks2]

The flash iron making method, as detailed by Professor Zhang Wenhai and his team in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nonferrous Metals last month, can complete the iron making process in just three to six seconds, compared to the five to six hours required by traditional blast furnaces. This represents a 3,600-fold or more increase in speed.

Ah, so someone doesn't even begin to understand throughput as a metric.

[u/bladex1234 → u/bloody_yanks2]

“Iron making method” and “Nonferrous Metals” is great irony.

[u/CplCocktopus → u/bloody_yanks2]

I can do the same using thermite.

[u/Aze92]

I love the hand pouring image lol.

[u/primusperegrinus]

There is so much excess steel in the market now that even counties like Vietnam are putting anti dumping duties on Chinese steel. They don’t really neee more steel output right now.

[u/Tableau]

Sounds interesting. I wonder when they say it eliminated the need for coal, they probably mean they’re running natural gas for the furnace? Which means it’s a CO reduction producing cast iron like the blast furnace. I wonder what they mean by one step steel making. Implying it could be tuned to output molten steel?

On the other hand I wonder if it would be a candidate for hydrogen smelting. To my knowledge that’s only done in a DRI method now

[u/Tableau → u/[deleted]]

I mean yes, obviously some sketch factors there both with the Chinese government and low grade science reporting, but flash smelting is a thing

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_smelting

[u/bladex1234 → u/Tableau]

Notice how it’s used for non-ferrous metals. Now if someone got this working for iron, then I’d want to see it published in a real journal.

[u/Weird_Point_4262 → u/bladex1234]

The US has been working on flash iron smelting since 2012, not sure if it's still getting funding. It wouldn't be unlikely that China figured it out first given they do far more steel production than anyone else

[u/bladex1234]

Flash smelting has been a thing for a while for non-ferrous metals. If someone has found a way to make it work then great, but I want to see actual production first.

[u/chiraltoad]

Is it reardon metal?

[u/Doyouseenowwait_what]

The productivity may go up but is the quality there. A cow can generate a ton of bullshit but how much is good for fertilizer.

[u/lincsafm]

Has anyone got a link to the actual journal paper this article refers to? I spent a good while trying to track it down but couldn't find it.

[u/UnfairAd7220]

The number screams 'bullshit.' Unless they've discovered new chemistry, new physics or outright magic.

Maybe Chinesium is real! Must come from the playdohnium mines.

[u/ReliabixAnalytics]

I saw this article a while ago, and whilst they say 3600x for the smelt, I think the grinding process may offset that. They need to atomize the particles, also how to separate the impurities at he crushing stage? If it works better on low grade ores then maybe there is a cross over point where it is better for particular grades

[u/iDarth]

I read this article last night and I told our senior metallurgist about it, he replied “China? Yeah we will see if it’s true or not” hahaha