Using Electricity to Produce Steel Without CO2 Emissions - MATLAB
Video length is 2:23

Using Electricity to Produce Steel Without CO2 Emissions

Adam Rauwerdink, Boston Metal
Igor Braverman, Boston Metal

Boston Metal is a startup working to decouple steel production from carbon dioxide emissions to help fight climate change. Their patented Molten Oxide Electrolysis (MOE) technology uses electricity to split iron oxide into liquid iron with a byproduct of oxygen instead of CO2. Using Model-Based Design, the team developed a full dynamic model of the system, which enables them to run virtual tests on the control system and save money on building physical prototypes.

As part of the MathWorks Startup Program, Boston Metal has access to MATLAB® at a startup-friendly price and engineering support from MathWorks experts. The partnership and MATLAB tools enable them to save resources, working as a small team to build out and validate their technology in order to raise more capital and grow their team.

Published: 6 Dec 2021

[MUSIC PLAYING]

10% of CO2 emissions last year were steel, and there's really no solution today that can solve that. We can. That's the challenge that we are trying to tackle, to decouple steel production from CO2 emissions.

Instead of using the traditional blast furnace approach, which is very carbon intensive, we are working on something called molten oxide electrolysis.

We're taking all of the carbon out of the equation and instead using electricity, the goal being to use clean electricity to do the same reactions and electrolysis process. So we're using only electricity to keep everything at temperature and to split iron oxide into liquid iron and into oxygen, which is our byproducts. And if you're powering this with clean electricity, you can drive your CO2 emissions almost to zero.

Being a startup, we've seen a tremendous amount of growth in the last couple of years. And we have a tremendous amount of technical validation we have to prove out. So the model-based design approach has been ingrained in the controls team and as the overall approach to designing the product. So that when the systems comes online, you're turning it on day one, or week one, or month one, and not now just starting your controls debugging.

We are working to produce the full dynamic model of the system that we're trying to control. That allows us to run virtual tests on the model of the system and test our control system against that digital twin. And that allows us to save money on building physical prototypes. We can achieve a lot with a very small team. That's what MathWorks software allows us to do.

And that's where the partnerships of The MathWorks and other partners can really help us move forward the technology to the level where we can raise large rounds of capital, really start to grow the team.

Working with the startup program at The MathWorks, it's extremely valuable, and it's extremely enabling. You can't really solve the climate crisis without fixing the way we make steel. The MathWorks products go a long way towards making these challenges surmountable.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

View more related videos