An electrifying new ironmaking method could slash carbon emissions

Good news! However, this process involves saltwater and chlorine! Scaling up this process still needs to be evaluated.

"... Making iron, the main ingredient of steel ... producing 8% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a team of chemists has come up with a way to make the business much more eco-friendly. By using electricity to convert iron ore and salt water into metallic iron and other industrially useful chemicals, researchers report today in Joule that their approach is cost effective, works well with electricity provided by wind and solar farms, and could even be carbon negative, consuming more carbon dioxide (CO2) than it produces. ...
and being amenable to working with intermittent renewable electricity [??? really]. “It checks all the boxes.” ..."

"Using electrochemistry ... have developed a way to make iron metal for steel production without burning fossil fuels.

The series of chemical reactions turns saltwater and iron oxide — cheap and abundant ingredients — into pure iron metal.

If scaled up, the process could help decarbonize one of the largest and most emissions-intensive industries worldwide.  ...
Decarbonizing this step would do roughly as much to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as converting every gas-guzzling vehicle on the roads to electric ...
a setup where electricity drives complementary chemical reactions. On one side of the reactor, iron oxide gets turned into iron and sodium hydroxide. On the other side, sodium chloride — table salt — gets turned into chlorine. ...
Importantly, the byproducts of the chemical reaction can all be repurposed. The sodium hydroxide that’s generated can go back into the reactor or be collected and used in carbon-capture technology. And chlorine is valuable in other industrial processes. ...
The lab also is building prototype devices and working with partners in industry to explore scaling up the approach.  ..."

From the highlights and abstract:

"Highlights

• A new cell based on the chlor-alkali process yielded a scalable ironmaking process

• Industrially relevant rates towards iron production were shown in full cells

• Iron was repeatedly collected as free-standing films with >95 wt % purity

Summary

The iron and steel industry accounts for ∼8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Electrochemical reduction of iron ore to metal for electric arc furnaces can enable sustainable steel production, but existing electrochemical processes require expensive capital or electrolytes. We report a low-temperature, electrochemical cell that consumes low-cost and abundant iron oxide and aqueous sodium chloride, while co-producing sodium hydroxide and chlorine. Industrially relevant current densities and Faradaic efficiencies for iron production were demonstrated, with 94% selectivity to iron metal at an applied current density of 200 mA cm−2. Freestanding films of phase-pure iron were formed after 4 h of continuous, stable electrolysis. The process can lead to levelized costs of iron that are competitive with iron produced in fossil-fuel-powered blast furnaces, and the co-produced sodium hydroxide can be used for CO2 capture from the air or ocean, creating a net-negative-emission process."

An electrifying new ironmaking method could slash carbon emissions | Science | AAAS: By extracting metallic iron without producing carbon dioxide, the new process could even be carbon negative, at least for part of the world’s iron production

UO researchers use electrochemistry to decarbonize iron production

Electrochemical chlor-iron process for iron production from iron oxide and salt water (no public access)