Do you believe “climate change” is a serious problem?
Maybe instead of Somalian pirates there will be Somalian steel smelters.
Is the environmental impact of creating synthic quartz greater than using fossil fuels?
Steel is made of carbon. Cement is made of carbon.
We live in a carbon world.
Solar is not environmentally friendly.
“To tackle climate change, we need to decarbonize energy in general,”
Blows his credibility.
This is probably not going to pan out.
No such thing as a fossil fuel, but we have plenty of petroleum.
Hard to mine iron and coal using solar too. Oh wait, we don’t like mining nor miners any more either.
What we really need is a war-like national movement ordered by the government to creat mining, drilling, refining, power plant building, farming, and ranching. We are in deep, deep trouble and are near the end of our national suicidal movement. Our cities are going to become caldrons of horror when things finally shut down.
Birds will love the new roasting temperatures ...
Great. Now do it at night for a 24/7 plant. Next is a rainy day. This stuff is all cute for artisan steelmakers. It doesn’t work for large industrial processors.
I see “proof of concept” and airy phrases the flying unicorns could glide on. I didn’t see any steel. Let’s see the article about the bench scale working model and some steel product. Until then, isn’t it just unicorns?
Liar ...
And sustained??
I think the “solar oven” that Edmund Scientific sold decades ago could easily reach 1000 C at the focal point of its Fresnel lens. Anyway, hard to imagine a steel mill that only works in the daytime on sunny days. 8 hr startup time and then shut down for the night.
My vote is still for oil, coal, nuclear reactors and deep geothermal. Fusion maybe someday. Plenty of valid options without wind/solar crap.
Actually, it's very small. Have they produced any "steel ingots"? Or have they just achieved a temperature?
"Swiss researchers have developed a solar energy method using synthetic quartz to achieve temperatures above 1,000°C for industrial processes potentially replacing fossil fuels in the production of materials like steel and cement."
"Potentially" I'm still waiting for the "Hydrogen Powered Cars" that were hyped in the 70's.
See. We could be "carbon nuetral" right now, if we only had hydrogen powered cars in the 70's. Or, we could have blown up the civilized world by now. You've seen EV's go up in flames. Will Hydrogen powered vehicles be more spectacular?
So called fossil fuel is the #2 most prevalent fluid on planet Earth. Its supply may be unlimited. Why not use it to power industry, and push the CO 2 levels in the atmosphere back to historical norms. Like 1,000ppm?
Then the sun set and the metal solidified in the vat.