I work in the steel industry so I can provide some background.
An Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) uses electricity and solid feed such as scrap metal and/or DRI (Directly Reduced Iron Briquettes) to produce Steel. The electrical arcs basically melt the solid feed producing liquid steel.
Note that an Arc Furnace needs highly metallic feed, Iron Ore which you dig up from the ground is an oxide (i.e. it is not metallic) it needs to be chemically reduced. You cannot feed ore directly into an Arc Furnace to produce steel. Arc Furnaces can recycle steel scrap into new steel but they are not suited to making virgin steel.
The most common way of producing virgin steel from Iron Ore is through what is known as an integrated steel plant which combines two processes
1. A Blast Furnace - which uses chemical reduction to produce molten liquid Iron.
2. A Basic Oxygen Furnace (also known as an LD converter) which injects oxygen at supersonic speed into the liquid Blast Furnace iron to remove impurities such as Carbon and Phosphorus. This produces liquid steel at the end of the process
Blast Furnaces use Carbon (Typically the carbon comes in form of coke, which is basically highly refined coal) for the chemical reduction of iron ore. CO2 is a byproduct of this reaction.
There are some alternates to a Blast Furnace Such as DRI (which uses a gas such as Natural Gas rather than Coke).
It is possible to chemically reduce Iron Ore using Hydrogen rather than Carbon (Thus avoiding CO2 as a byproduct) but for a variety of complicated technical reasons it is not as simple as just swapping the coke in a blast furnace one for one with hydrogen.
Hydrogen is widely seen within the industry as being the future of steelmaking, there is massive ongoing effort currently underway to develop capability etc the industry is very much going through a transitional period at the moment. I know of one plant in Sweden which is doing some pretty cutting edge work in this area currently.
An Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) uses electricity and solid feed such as scrap metal and/or DRI (Directly Reduced Iron Briquettes) to produce Steel. The electrical arcs basically melt the solid feed producing liquid steel.
Note that an Arc Furnace needs highly metallic feed, Iron Ore which you dig up from the ground is an oxide (i.e. it is not metallic) it needs to be chemically reduced. You cannot feed ore directly into an Arc Furnace to produce steel. Arc Furnaces can recycle steel scrap into new steel but they are not suited to making virgin steel.
The most common way of producing virgin steel from Iron Ore is through what is known as an integrated steel plant which combines two processes
1. A Blast Furnace - which uses chemical reduction to produce molten liquid Iron.
2. A Basic Oxygen Furnace (also known as an LD converter) which injects oxygen at supersonic speed into the liquid Blast Furnace iron to remove impurities such as Carbon and Phosphorus. This produces liquid steel at the end of the process
Blast Furnaces use Carbon (Typically the carbon comes in form of coke, which is basically highly refined coal) for the chemical reduction of iron ore. CO2 is a byproduct of this reaction.
There are some alternates to a Blast Furnace Such as DRI (which uses a gas such as Natural Gas rather than Coke).
It is possible to chemically reduce Iron Ore using Hydrogen rather than Carbon (Thus avoiding CO2 as a byproduct) but for a variety of complicated technical reasons it is not as simple as just swapping the coke in a blast furnace one for one with hydrogen.
Hydrogen is widely seen within the industry as being the future of steelmaking, there is massive ongoing effort currently underway to develop capability etc the industry is very much going through a transitional period at the moment. I know of one plant in Sweden which is doing some pretty cutting edge work in this area currently.