Very interesting...is transportation of ore as big a fuel consumer as the actual refining? I am not at all familiar with the process.
Very interesting indeed. That's WAY out of the wheelhouse of pretty much everyone here but we're a curious bunch so, welcome.
Hey, thanks! transporting the materials is usually a small part of the energy consumption. The main energy consumption is (1) chemical energy to rip oxygen atoms off the iron oxide usually with carbon monoxide and/or hydrogen from coal or natural gas, (2) thermal energy to heat the fuel+ore to 900-1500C where the reducing reactions take place. In current practices there is also a lot of energy expended “beneficiating” the raw iron ore to something more pure (grinding to fines, magnetic separation), then pelletizing or sintering back into pure iron ore rocks, and also baking coal at high temperatures to produce coke (for it’s mechanical strength to support several hundred feet of vertically stacked iron ore and coke in the blast furnace).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965262300121X?via=ihub#bbib13 This iron tech was in the news recently.
