Homemade steel

“From Dust to Edge” is the documentation of a long journey in the efforts of making a blade out of homemade steel.

Henri Bergius this sounds up your alley. I don’t think my landlord will go for it but there is plenty of space in the finnish woods for a project like this.
2015-02-17: Nanolaminated steel

the Modumetal process can increase the strength of metals such as steel by as much as 10x. Modumetal uses an advanced form of electroplating, a process already used to make the chrome plating you might see on the engine and exhaust pipes of a motorcycle. Electroplating involves immersing a metal part in a chemical bath containing various metal ions, and then applying an electrical current to cause those ions to form a metal coating.

2021-02-07: 20% less energy

Boston Metal’s process will use 20% less energy than a conventional blast furnace. And if the facility can use cheap, plentiful renewable electricity, perhaps from a hydropower plant, its steel would cost less than the competition. “At scale, we expect to make better metal at lower cost and with no CO2 emissions

2021-11-05: Volvo deployment

Steelmaking is currently extremely CO2 intensive, accounting for about 7% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. As we continue to use ever more steel for new infrastructure around the world, the task of decarbonizing the industry is growing ever more urgent. Hydrogen can now perform that task and Volvo has just taken delivery of the first consignment of CO2-free steel.

2023-02-23: Nice overview of the history of steel production

Blast furnaces continue to be constructed around the world, particularly in China, which now produces more steel than the rest of the world combined. For the foreseeable future, recycling steel scrap won’t be sufficient to supply the world’s need for iron, and we’ll continue to need iron ore based methods of steelmaking. But blast furnaces, like cement plants, have the unfortunate distinction of producing CO2 as a fundamental part of the process: a blast furnace is essentially a machine that turns iron oxide and carbon into iron and CO2.
Direct reduction with CO still produces CO2, but direct reduction with hydrogen only produces water as a byproduct. “Green steel” efforts are thus often centered around finding low-carbon ways to produce hydrogen to use in the direct reduction process. Of the 72 green steel projects listed on this “green steel tracker,” 49 of them involve low CO2 hydrogen production, mostly either “green” hydrogen made via electrolysis or “blue” hydrogen made from natural gas plus CO2 capture.

2023-02-24: Blast furnace retrofit upgrade

It replaces 90% of the coke used in the blast furnace with direct CO injection. The CO comes from a system that captures and recycles the furnace’s own exhaust “top gas,” separating out CO, CO2, hydrogen and nitrogen gases at high temperatures. These gases are then sent through a twin-reactor redox system that keeps the carbon inside a closed loop. Retrofitting this thermochemical redox system to existing BF-BOF steel plants should make it notably cheaper to produce steel. And emissions would be slashed by 94%.
“The system we are proposing can be retrofitted to existing plants, which reduces the risk of stranded assets, and both the reduction in CO2, and the cost savings, are seen immediately.”