World first: Dutch brewery burns iron as a clean, recyclable fuel

Many industries use heat-intensive processes that generally require the burning of fossil fuels, but a surprising green fuel alternative is emerging in the form of metal powders. Ground very fine, cheap iron powder burns readily at high temperatures, releasing energy as it oxidises in a process that emits no carbon and produces easily collectable rust, or iron oxide, as its only emission.

If burning metal powder as fuel sounds strange, the next part of the process will be even more surprising. That rust can be regenerated straight back into iron powder with the application of electricity, and if you do this using solar, wind or other zero-carbon power generation systems, you end up with a totally carbon-free cycle. The iron acts as a kind of clean battery for combustion processes, charging up via one of a number of means including electrolysis, and discharging in flames and heat.

It is not an energy generation plant. It is an energy storage facility. It is about the only way you can store HUGE amounts of energy for serious periods of time. Batteries, flywheels, supercapacitors, CAES — none of these can store and release energy like pumped storage.

Wiki—> Pumped storage is by far the largest-capacity form of grid energy storage available, and, as of 2020, the United States Department of Energy Global Energy Storage Database reports that PSH accounts for around 95% of all active tracked storage installations worldwide, with a total installed throughput capacity of over 181 GW, of which about 29 GW are in the United States, and a total installed storage capacity of over 1.6 TWh, of which about 250 GWh are in the United States.

The first pumped storage facility was built in 1907. In the 1930s reversible hydroelectric turbines became available.

Of course there are round-trip losses. There are with every energy storage system. The round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies between 70%–80%, with some sources claiming up to 87%.

”Science experiment”? Sure, you go on believing that.

OK, you win. Not a ‘science experiment’, but the only thing it does is take advantage of the cost difference between making the energy at different times of the day under different load requirements, and ‘store’ energy for high demand times.
I stand corrected.

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