EAGER: CET: Decarbonizing Steel Manufacturing via High-Temperature Plasma Electrochemistry

This EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award is made in response to Dear Colleague Letter 23-109, as part of the NSF-wide Clean Energy Technology initiative. This project aims to develop a novel plasma-electrochemical approach for steel manufacturing that eliminates the need for carbon-based reducing agents and fuels. By leveraging renewable electricity to drive the reduction of iron ore to metallic iron, this process has the potential to dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of steel production, which currently accounts for 20% of all industrial CO2 emissions. The project integrates fundamental research on high-temperature plasma-electrochemical reactions with techno-economic and life-cycle analyses to assess the viability and environmental benefits of this transformative technology. The educational component of the project focuses on curriculum development in plasma manufacturing, a multi-disciplinary student project to assess the economic and environmental impacts of various decarbonization routes for steel manufacturing, and outreach to the steel manufacturing industry. The project's educational initiatives will prepare a diverse cohort of students and future leaders to tackle the challenges of industrial decarbonization and drive the transition to a sustainable manufacturing future. The research plan comprises three core activities: 1) Establishing reactor design principles by fabricating a lab-scale prototype and studying the impacts of operating parameters on iron production rate and efficiency; 2) Elucidating the fundamental mechanisms of iron oxide reduction and oxygen evolution at the plasma-electrolyte interface using a variety of characterization techniques and multiphysics modeling; 3) Quantifying the techno-economic and environmental benefits of the proposed technology via life-cycle and cost analyses benchmarked against state-of-the-art steel manufacturing processes. By integrating research and educational activities, this project will generate fundamental knowledge and engineering design principles for a new approach to decarbonizing steel manufacturing. The insights gained will lay the foundation for sustainable steel production and advance the broader field of high-temperature plasma-electrochemical processing for energy-efficient, environmentally benign manufacturing of critical materials. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.