Emissions from millions of automobiles powered by fossil fuels continue to pose a serious threat to the Earth’s environmental health. But they’re not alone in doing such damage.
Many industrial processes are exacerbating the problem by putting substances into the atmosphere and endangering the well-being of people and nature.
One prevalent source of such negative consequences is the manufacturing of one of the world’s most useful and valuable materials: steel.
Making steel is among the most carbon-intensive manufacturing processes, producing about 7% of carbon dioxide emissions globally. Steel production is part of a broader industrial sector that accounted for about 30 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. in 2021, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Those emissions trap heat from the sun, which causes global warming, leading to climate changes that are altering weather patterns and disrupting natural environmental processes.
“The disruption is a growing threat that is going to require a combination of research breakthroughs and technological innovations to stop,” says Professor Sridhar Seetharaman, chief science officer in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University.
Declaring need for decarbonization
To help solve the problem, ASU was selected earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, to help establish a clean energy manufacturing institute to take on the challenges of curbing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from industrial process heating, a large source of carbon emissions from the use of fossil fuels.
As part of the project, ASU now leads the Electrified Processes for Industry Without Carbon, or EPIXC, a multi-institution effort directed by Seetharaman.
EPIXC joins the DOE’s six other Manufacturing USA institutes, which are working to move new clean electrification processes out of the lab and into the marketplace.
The goals of EPIXC include eliminating carbon emissions by developing the technologies and workforce required to replace fossil-fuel-based heating with electric power sources, as well as significant decarbonization of industrial processes usisng clean energy sources.
The efforts emanate from the DOE’s climate and economic competitiveness aspirations related to two programs, the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Industrial Heat Shot program, part of an Energy Earthshots Initiative, seeks to develop cost-competitive industrial heat decarbonization technologies that drastically lower greenhouse gas emissions. The DOE office’s Clean Fuels & Products Shot aims to decarbonize the fuel and chemical industry through solutions for sectors in which it is difficult to eliminate carbon, such as aircraft and marine fuels.
The research led by Seetharaman to be conducted through the Basic Energy Sciences program within the DOE’s Office of Science is formally titled “Fundamental studies of hydrogen arc plasmas for high-efficiency and carbon-free steelmaking.”