Clean energy produced by iron instead of fossil fuels?

Companies around the world are focusing on finding renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels. However, there are many tasks that generate energy from solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and hydropower and use it at the industrial level. In the meantime, a team of Dutch students developed a technology to generate energy by burning new iron powder, and in fact, an attempt to allocate all the energy in the brewery to a circular energy system using iron began.

Instead of fossil fuels, power generation is being carried out using wind or solar power. However, because wind and sun are not always available, there are aspects that fuel replacement is difficult depending on the industry. In addition, hydrogen and electric power need a large physical space to store energy and have a problem of high cost. A technology that produces energy using crab iron powder developed to solve the problem.

Iron powder does not require as many storage warehouses as 50 micrometers in diameter. Iron powder as well as oil and gas can produce energy to ignite. However, unlike oil or gas, it does not emit carbon dioxide when burned.

When iron burns, only rust comes out. The steam can be used for industrial purposes by burning iron powder to produce steam with energy. It is also possible to move the steam turbine to supply power. The molten iron produced by burning iron can be reincarnated into iron again by wind power generation and solar power generation. Like this, iron powder can be a fuel that can be used at the industrial level, but it is said that further development and expansion are needed to realize it.

It is SOLID made by the student team of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands that is developing to use iron powder as an energy source. The research team is attempting a business alliance and announced in November 2020 that the Dutch Swinkels Family Brewers became the first company in the world to use the iron energy system on an industrial scale. All of the energy required to produce 15 million beer per year is supplied by the brewery’s circulating iron fuel system.

Iron powder is added to the circulating iron fuel system. The brewery said that because the company has been a family business, it has decided to invest in a sustainable circular economy that considers things on a per-generational basis rather than annually. He said he would continue to invest.

Iron powder is a clean energy fuel that is relatively inexpensive, has high energy density, does not take a storage location, and is easy to transport. In addition, although the combustion temperature is high, cryogenic cooling such as hydrogen is unnecessary. And the point is that energy is not lost due to long-term storage. According to a 2018 paper, the efficiency of the circulating energy system by iron is theoretically expected to reach 40%.

The research team said that they were pleased that the system was used for the first time at the industrial level. It is said to be replacing fuel power plants with sustainable iron sources. Related information can be found here .