The Dutch brewery is the first in the world to use iron as a clean recyclable fuel
We are all used to the fact that in heat-intensive processes in industry, coal, fuel oil is used as fuel, wood and few people can imagine that powdered wood can be used as an alternative fuel iron. It is about this unique technology that I want to tell you today.
Iron as an alternative fuel
The first enterprise in the world that actually uses powdered iron in the form of fuel in its technological process was a Dutch brewery. And all this was due to the introduction of modern technologies and the investors' faith in new technologies.
After all, powdered iron powder burns perfectly at elevated temperatures. This process does not emit such hated carbon, but only rust (iron oxide) is produced, which is quite easy to involve in the recovery process.
Yes, do not be surprised, the resulting rust can be involved in the regeneration process and this only requires electricity. And if we use electricity from, for example, solar panels, then we get a completely environmentally friendly process of burning and recovering fuel without carbon emissions.
This technology was developed by the Metal Power consortium and the company's engineers TU Eindhoven, and adopted by the company Swinkels family brewers and now they produce up to 15 million glasses of beer per calendar year using iron fuel.
What are the advantages of iron fuel
The main advantage of this type of fuel is its cost and availability. In addition, this type of fuel is easy to transport and has a high energy density. In this case, the combustion temperature reaches 1800 degrees Celsius.
At the same time, as practice has shown, up to 80% of waste iron can be recovered, which is comparable in efficiency to modern methods of hydrogen production.
Of course, this technology is still far from ideal, but broad prospects are opening up before it.
The engineers already have plans to build a 10 MW system that will be operational by 2024 year, and by 2030 it is planned to transfer the first coal-fired power plants to powdered fuel metal.
Scientists see quite big prospects in using powdered iron as an alternative environmentally friendly fuel.
It is even assumed that, to some extent, it will be possible to save energy produced by renewable sources in this form (although the efficiency in this case will be no more than 40%).
Well, let's see how this technology will develop and whether it realizes its potential. If you liked the article, then put your thumbs up and subscribe. Thank you for your attention!