NETL Helping Reduce Carbon Footprint of Iron Production

	NETL researchers pour molten metal from a bench-scale electric arc furnace during direct smelting tests in cooperative work with Cardero Iron Ore Company Ltd.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) are helping the Cardero Iron Ore Company Ltd., to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced during iron smelting.

NETL is applying its unique capabilities in ore processing to help Cardero process iron ores with reduced carbon dioxide emissions.

Cardero Iron is developing iron-ore sand deposits containing finely-divided magnetite (Fe₃O₄) particles that do not require grinding before further processing. Eliminating the grinding avoids the energy consumed by size reduction – about 10 kilowatt hours per ton of ore.

In an initial series of tests in the cooperative work under a funds-in agreement with Cardero Iron, NETL researchers briquetted 500 pounds of a magnetic concentrate provided by the company, and then performed direct smelting tests on the unsintered briquettes in an electric arc furnace.

Eliminating sintering, which oxidizes the magnetite to hematite (Fe₂O₃), reduces the production of CO₂ by approximately 11 percent.

Development of industrial processes that are cleaner and more energy efficient is consistent with NETL goals of reducing CO₂ emissions.

Cardero Iron is a subsidiary of the Cardero Resources Corporation.

NETL’s Hybrid Fuel Cell Turbines Test Facility Resumes Operations

	The Hyper facility at NETL.

The Hybrid Performance Fuel Cell Test Facility, known as “Hyper,” at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory recently completed a full system safety inspection and shakedown by project personnel and is now back in operation.

The facility is one of only two hybrid hardware simulation facilities in operation worldwide, and is the only facility that uses hardware to simulate fuel cell dynamics. The advantage of this over a simple numerical simulation is that it can be coupled to a real turbine, heat exchangers and other balance-of-plant hardware. This allows NETL researchers to explore operational transients that are applicable to large power systems without risking damage to an $8 million fuel cell.

The complete shakedown of the facility repositions NETL as a world leader in fuel cell turbine hybrid power systems research. Hybrid systems are important because they offer the potential for development of high efficiency fossil based cycles with carbon capture.

Polish Researcher Collaborates on Chemical Looping Combustion at NETL

	NETL researcher Ranjani Siriwardane, left; visiting scientist Ewelina Ksepko, center, from the Institute for Chemical Processing of Coal in Poland; and researcher Thomas Simonyi in front of the thermogravimetric analyzer, where they test samples in their collaborative chemical looping combustion research at NETL.

Dr. Ewelina Ksepko, a researcher from the Institute for Chemical Processing of Coal in Poland, is conducting collaborative research on chemical looping combustion (CLC) at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).

Chemical looping combustion is a novel combustion technique that utilizes oxygen from an oxygen carrier to combust fuels.

Dr. Ksepko’s employer, the Institute for Chemical Processing of Coal, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NETL and the Central Mining Institute of Poland in June 2008.

Three months later, Abbie Layne, director of the Separations and Fuels Processing Division in NETL’s Office of Research and Development, and Ranjani Siriwardane, an NETL research scientist, met Dr. Ksepko during the Pittsburgh Coal Conference and discussed the possibility of Dr. Ksepko spending time at NETL as a guest researcher. That led to her coming to NETL to work with Siriwardane.

Dr. Ksepko will be involved in development of novel oxygen carriers for the CLC process. She will be testing the oxygen carriers in the thermogravimetic analyzer and bench scale flow reactors at NETL. The research will include multi-cycle tests to understand the stability of the performance and the effect of impurities such as hydrogen sulfide on the performance of the carriers.

A research paper from this collaborative effort will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. Dr. Ksepko will be at NETL for about a month but the collaborative research will be continued as a part of the agreement between NETL and the Institute for Chemical Processing of Coal in Poland.