If you're like me—and I know I am, Chlorine Trifluoride was probably the first thing that came to mind when reading the headline.*
From New Atlas, November 4:
Many industries use heat-intensive processes that generally require the burning of fossil fuels, but a surprising green fuel alternative is emerging in the form of metal powders. Ground very fine, cheap iron powder burns readily at high temperatures, releasing energy as it oxidizes in a process that emits no carbon and produces easily collectable rust, or iron oxide, as its only emission.
If burning metal powder as fuel sounds strange, the next part of the process will be even more surprising. That rust can be regenerated straight back into iron powder with the application of electricity, and if you do this using solar, wind or other zero-carbon power generation systems, you end up with a totally carbon-free cycle. The iron acts as a kind of clean battery for combustion processes, charging up via one of a number of means including electrolysis, and discharging in flames and heat.
Recently, Swinkels Family Brewers in the Netherlands has become the first business in the world to put this process to work at an industrial scale. The company has been working with the Metal Power Consortium and researchers at TU Eindhoven to install a cyclical iron fuel system at its Brewery Bavaria that's capable of providing all the heat necessary for some 15 million glasses of beer a year....
....MUCH MORE
*Unrelated except for the messing about with iron oxide angle:News You Probably Shouldn't Use: The Chemical So Awful It Can Burn Rust or Sand
Rust.
How the hell do you burn something that is already oxidized?
Meet Chlorine Trifluoride: The Chemical That Sets Fire to Asbestos on Contact....
