World's biggest battery to be built at KURRI KURRI.

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Originally Posted by PhilipA

It will be great if the pilot plant works.

Already Direct Reduction steel making has been in existence for many years which is a "half way House" but AFAIR it depends on significant amounts of scrap steel to be included in the second process where the sponge iron is converted to steel.
BHP were also involved in building a Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI) plant in the Pilbara which was the design of the CSIRO , but it didn't work on a large scale.
Regards PhilipA

$2.4b Port Hedland BHP plant to be demolished - ABC News

Ouch!

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If I remember correctly (and I may not be) this plant and a similar unit from Rio / CRA was part of the conditions to export iron ore. That they had to attempt to make pig iron here and export it in briquette form. It was the governments attempt to keep some iron making capacity here. They both used gas instead of coal. I know that the Rio plant had to grind the ore to a powder to get the gas to do its reducing thing, but they had problems because the powder then stuck to everything.

Cheers Glen.

The point I was trying to make is that a pilot plant may work but full scale production may not as evidenced by the HBI plant which was touted at the time to be the answer to a maiden's prayer.

It is to be hoped that the recent article linked by Bob10 comes to fruition but there are many cases where BIG dollars are invested for no return as with the HBI plant.
Regards PhilipA

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Originally Posted by PhilipA

The point I was trying to make is that a pilot plant may work but full scale production may not as evidenced by the HBI plant which was touted at the time to be the answer to a maiden's prayer.

It is to be hoped that the recent article linked by Bob10 comes to fruition but there are many cases where BIG dollars are invested for no return as with the HBI plant.
Regards PhilipA

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https://www.bhp.com/-/media/bhp/docu...heet.pdf?la=en


Is this the one your chatting about? If so it was a cleaning process that shut it down.

BHP is following in the non C02 steel process via its published two options and is also trying to help China as its customer due to Scope 3 emissions they are now accounting for. "We stand ready to partner with our customers on this journey. As a leading supplier of steelmaking raw materials, BHP has taken an industry leading position by outlining specific goals and actions to address our downstream Scope 3 emissions. We approach this challenge with both deep technical knowledge and multi-decadal relationships with our customers across the major steelmaking regions."

BHP wants some of our taxpayer funds at "BHP’s Nickel West division is among seven companies to have been shortlisted and invited to submit a full application for the next stage of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s (ARENA) A$70 million ($49 million) hydrogen funding round."

Fully agree on ROI and accountability for spending money.

Noticed 20 tonnes per day from "JV CO WITH LIBERTY HYDROGEN, PURE HYDROGEN INTERNATIONAL SIGNED TERM SHEET WITH PORT ANTHONY RENEWABLES" (I do not hold RLE but do have SXA )

Back on Batteries- I think I broke another one- DOH. Its still under its 10 year warranty thankfully. [biggrin]

https://www.bhp.com/-/media/bhp/docu...heet.pdf?la=en

Is this the one your chatting about? If so it was a cleaning process that shut it down.

BHP is following in the non C02 steel process via its published two options and is also trying to help China as its customer due to Scope 3 emissions they are now accounting for. "We stand ready to partner with our customers on this journey. As a leading supplier of steelmaking raw materials, BHP has taken an industry leading position by outlining specific goals and actions to address our downstream Scope 3 emissions. We approach this challenge with both deep technical knowledge and multi-decadal relationships with our customers across the major steelmaking regions." Bobs post on highly likely future tariffs and costs on C02 emissions from Chinese steel is on the money in time. Suspect China is far more likely to develop cleaner technology in that sector due to the horrible antipollution and cost caused directly by the pollution they are creating.

BHP wants some of our taxpayer funds at "BHP’s Nickel West division is among seven companies to have been shortlisted and invited to submit a full application for the next stage of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s (ARENA) A$70 million ($49 million) hydrogen funding round."

Fully agree on ROI and accountability for spending money.

Noticed 20 tonnes per day from "JV CO WITH LIBERTY HYDROGEN, PURE HYDROGEN INTERNATIONAL SIGNED TERM SHEET WITH PORT ANTHONY RENEWABLES" (I do not hold RLE but do have SXA )

Back on Batteries- I think I broke another one- DOH. Its still under its 10 year warranty thankfully. [biggrin]

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Originally Posted by bob10

How steel may kick its coal habit
Steelmakers worldwide are facing mounting pressure from government regulators and consumers to decarbonize operations. Doing so is essential to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and staving off most of the worst effects of climate change, experts say. In recent months, the world’s three top producers—Europe’s ArcelorMittal, China’s Baowu Steel, and Japan’s Nippon Steel—committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, echoing targets set in their home countries.
But in order to curb steel’s carbon emissions, the sector will have to transform how the material is traditionally made.

Outside Boston, in the industrial suburb of Woburn, one company is working to replace coal with electrons. Boston Metal, an outfit spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, uses electric currents to heat iron ore into a bright orange-white liquid, which converts into metal and cools as gray steel blocks. The process doesn’t create greenhouse gas emissions, and when powered with renewable electricity, can be completely emissions-free.




How Steel Might Finally Kick Its Coal Habit | WIRED

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I can see this working in recycling steel but not if making steel from iron ore - for sure this could be used to turn iron ore into pig iron but it then needs a carbon source - traditionally coal in the form of coke to get carbon into molten iron to make steel. Now if the electrodes are carbon then yes the carbon can get into the steel but where does the carbon to make the carbon electrodes come from? - normally from coal.

I accept I might be missing something with this.

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Originally Posted by Hoges

Serious indeed! But...remember, at Macbank 'everything' has a price. No doubt they've done their homework and estimated the gift horse "social" $$$ on offer from the Federal govt.., and are betting on massive capital gains when the time is "right"... there's no altruism for 'saving the planet' in this play. It's a business opportunity pure and simple....

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Agree - Storing energy when it's cheap and suppling it in high demand for a premium is nothing new. It has been done in the gas industry for quite some time - https://thehub.agl.com.au/articles/2...orage-facility and although it's Australia's largest there are 1/2 a dozen other facilities like this around Oz. A couple of companies are looking at pumping gas back into depleted 'near shore" undersea reservoirs to do the same thing. But for some reason there has been no general conspiracy about it, maybe because it doesn't have the word "renewable" in it.

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Originally Posted by Hoges

A piece of trivia: Kg for Kg the energy output of real-time power availability from burning coal in a high efficient/low emission process is 25 times greater than 1 kg of lithium battery storage....

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This maybe true, but you can only burn coal once.

Cheers Glen

There have been a couple of news articles over the past few weeks about alternatives to Snowy Hydro Mk 2 and batteries to store energy for when the sun dont shine and the wind does not blow. No as efficient as batteries but relatively cheap and use less resources.

One is old technology that used to be used in the 19th century - massive flywheels - when there is excess energy the flywheels are spun up and when the sun goes down the flywheels power generators.

The second is being developed in the Hunter - waste metallic material (scrap steel was being used) is reduced to particles just a bit bigger that dust - about iron filings size and then pressure compressed into blocks about the size of house bricks. When there is excess energy these bricks are heated to red hot and when the sun goes down - water is poured over the bricks creating steam to power generators. A pilot test plant is being developed.

So alternatives to batteries are being considered and developed.

Garry

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Originally Posted by 101RRS

There have been a couple of news articles over the past few weeks about alternatives to Snowy Hydro Mk 2 and batteries to store energy for when the sun dont shine and the wind does not blow. No as efficient as batteries but relatively cheap and use less resources.

One is old technology that used to be used in the 19th century - massive flywheels - when there is excess energy the flywheels are spun up and when the sun goes down the flywheels power generators.

The second is being developed in the Hunter - waste metallic material (scrap steel was being used) is reduced to particles just a bit bigger that dust - about iron filings size and then pressure compressed into blocks about the size of house bricks. When there is excess energy these bricks are heated to red hot and when the sun goes down - water is poured over the bricks creating steam to power generators. A pilot test plant is being developed.

So alternatives to batteries are being considered and developed.

Garry

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We are at the beginning of a massive shift in power generation. Early days, but it is exciting to see. There may even be a place for nuclear fusion power plants down the road. [ If they can smooth out the problems , perhaps a propulsion system for a future submarine]. We live in interesting times.

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Originally Posted by 101RRS

There have been a couple of news articles over the past few weeks about alternatives to Snowy Hydro Mk 2 and batteries to store energy for when the sun dont shine and the wind does not blow. No as efficient as batteries but relatively cheap and use less resources.

One is old technology that used to be used in the 19th century - massive flywheels - when there is excess energy the flywheels are spun up and when the sun goes down the flywheels power generators.

The second is being developed in the Hunter - waste metallic material (scrap steel was being used) is reduced to particles just a bit bigger that dust - about iron filings size and then pressure compressed into blocks about the size of house bricks. When there is excess energy these bricks are heated to red hot and when the sun goes down - water is poured over the bricks creating steam to power generators. A pilot test plant is being developed.

So alternatives to batteries are being considered and developed.

Garry

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We already employ this type of technology in our grid. Large flywheels are called large synchronous condensers with flywheels and provide grid inertia. Some of this grid inertia is already provided by the large rotors used in traditional power generators; however, some power generation doesn't have large spinning rotors and additional condensers will then require construction. See AEMO | Energy Explained: Frequency Control link.

Here is the final-2020-integrated-system-plan.pdf (aemo.com.au) from AEMO. It gives quite a large amount of information that is worth reading if anyone is curious about the future of power services in Australia.

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One is old technology that used to be used in the 19th century - massive flywheels - when there is excess energy the flywheels are spun up and when the sun goes down the flywheels power generators.

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In the early noughties this was touted as "the next big thing" using super conductor bearings to levitate the flywheel ie no friction losses.

In fact there are some installations in Australia.
The one I know of is at Coral bay in WA.
They have some (6?)wind generators and 12 diesel generators and the flywheels are used for frequency control. They are relatively small modular units in cabinets.
Earlier there were Swiss buses that used flywheels for their energy.

They fell out of favour as the destructive effects of a large flywheel jumping its bearings could be dire.

However I often think that the disused mining pits in the Hunter Valley would be perfect for the installation of really huge flywheels at the bottom of the pit.
If they ran out of control it should remain in the pit.
Maybe I should copywrite the idea.
Regards PhilipA

Flywheel energy storage - Wikipedia

Case study_Coral Bay_9AKK100580A2549_Dec2012_HR.pdf (abb.com)