Hydrogen is a crucial part of the world’s plans to greenify its manufacturing and automobile industries as a fuel whose production and use needn’t emit carbon. But in the steelmaking industry, hydrogen can also be used instead of carbon in an important chemical reaction that contributes to 5-7% of the global greenhouse-gas emissions and 11% of carbon dioxide emissions. That is, if scientists can surmount an old roadblock.
In particular, if the results of a new study are borne out, this barrier may finally be giving way. Researchers in Germany have reported that they may have figured out why using hydrogen as a reactant in a reaction with iron oxide proceeds more slowly than expected, a fact that currently renders the element infeasible as a substitute for carbon.
