China’s ‘explosive’ ironmaking breakthrough achieves 3,600-fold speed boost
A new method for making iron is not only faster and cheaper, but also better for the environment, according to Chinese researchers.
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For a continuous process, what difference is there if it takes 3 seconds or 3 days?
The energy saving and ability to use lower grade ores seems important though.
I think the energy-saving production is the real benefit, like you said.
According to calculations by Zhang and his colleagues, the new technology could improve the energy use efficiency of China’s steel industry by more than one-third. As it eliminates the need for coal entirely, it would also enable the steel industry to achieve the coveted goal of “near-zero carbon dioxide emissions”, Zhang’s team added.
Obviously it remains to be seen if this pans out. "Could" and "does" are different things, after all. I could just as well imagine every efficiency gain being wiped out by the Jevons effect.
Given the large share of chinese steel consumption being in construction and infrastructure, we don't need to worry too much about the jevon's effect. Once the country fully develops, steel demand will naturally be cut.
The answer is obviously volume. If the process takes 3 seconds as opposed to 3 days then you can obviously have much higher throughput.
It's a continuous process, think of a conveyor belt. If the conveyor belt is 3 feet long or 3 miles long, the rate you can put things on it is the same.
Now imagine making the conveyor belt wider.
Yes, that has nothing to do with the time the items have to sit on the conveyerbelt. This is a process that takes 3600x less time, not one with 3600x more throughput.
If they put 1 ton of iron ore in the furnace over a period of 1 hour, even if the iron is at the bottom of the furnace within seconds instead of hours, it doesn't enable them to add iron ore at a faster rate.
Your made up scenario has absolutely nothing to do with how the process actually works though. You literally just made a straw man here. The reality is that the iron has to sit in the furnace for less time, and that means you can put more iron through the furnace of a particular size than you could otherwise. This really shouldn't be a hard concept to grasp, yet here we are.
Oh so it does have a higher throughput too.
You could have just said that.
That is literally what I said in my first reply. 🤷
If they put 1 ton of iron ore in the furnace over a period of 1 hour, even if the iron is at the bottom of the furnace within seconds instead of hours, it doesn't enable them to add iron ore at a faster rate
Cool. So, now they get to put several times more of the iron. I wonder if your argument is going to be 'but they will hit another bottleneck, then'.
you just have to imagine that everything is immutable to dismiss this lol
a development of this magnitude will of course change how the production process is done, you don't harvest 10000acres of land with a 3 row combine.
