So RIFT (Renewable Iron Fuel Technology), a startup that works on developing the concept of iron fuel as an alternative source of energy, has just won 11 million euros in investments. Previously, it already received financing from Bill Gates’ climate fund.
But what is it?
Behind it is a research group at TU Eindhoven, headed by professor Philip de Goey. RIFT and its competitor Iron+ are associated with this group.
Is this about redox states being exploited? Wouldn’t that be a wonderful idea!
(It’s what our bodies run on too.)
Yes, as it turns out: “Oddly enough, it all started with a group of researchers in Odessa, working on the generic topic of oxidation of metals, back in the nineties. Three of the people from that group were instrumental in bringing the metal fuels research to Eindhoven: Samuel Goroshin, who transferred to McGill University in Canada, Viktor Kornilov, who came to De Goey’s group in Eindhoven to pursue his PhD on a non-metals related combustion subject, and Yuri Shoshyn, who later came to De Goey’s group as well.”
“De Goey decided that in his final ten years as a scientist he would not only focus on the burning of metals and on reducing the resulting oxides back into fuel, but also in parallel on how to bring this technology to market.”
See also: https://spectrum.ieee.org/iron-fuel
From https://spectrum.ieee.org/iron-fuel:
Some of the iron powder inevitably evaporates to form iron-oxide nanoparticles that cannot be collected and turned back to iron. Both Altira and IRON+ have worked out ways to minimize this nanoparticle formation to reduce metal loss. “We improved the boiler by increasing the efficiency of heat transfer,” says Philip de Goey, a mechanical engineering professor at Eindhoven and cofounder of Metalot. “The evaporation of iron powder leading to nanoparticle emissions has been decreased by a factor of 10, so it is smaller than 0.3 percent. The nanoparticles are not emitted in the atmosphere but captured in a HEPA filter.”
Questions that I may look into later):
- Where does the iron come from? Does this rely on increased mining of iron? It’s supposed to be fully circular, once in place, but how do you transition to it?
Five years ago, they wrote: “On top of which, it is one of the worlds most commonly available materials and is already being processed on a large scale in the steel industry, for example.” Wrong answer. Possibly simply not nuanced enough.
- How is it burned?
Five years ago, they wrote: “iron powder burns in a flame and releases heat. Water vapour generated in this way can be used to generate electricity by means of a turbine”. The flame likely merely serves as a catalyst (no, it’s not, it’s the result of the burning), but what is the oxidant? Oxygen from ambient air?
- What about the hydrogen?
Five years ago
https://www.en-former.com/en/generating-power-with-recycled-iron/
Folks at the Dutch universities of technology often use a lot of business mumbo jumbo such as “the value chain” because they also have to focus on marketing to the industry. They were going to “tour through the Dutch value chain”, they wrote back then.
Once completed, the SIR2 will tour through the Dutch value chain as to showcase the potential of the IRHYS technology.”
