A Minute With Matt: How Do We Make the U.S. Iron and Steel Industry Even Stronger and More Secure? (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video A Minute With Matt: How Do We Make the U.S. Iron and Steel Industry Even Stronger and More Secure.

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[Text on screen: A Minute With Matt]

[Text on screen: Making steel with less energy is a win for U.S. manufacturing]

>>Matt Ringer, Laboratory Program Manager, Advanced Manufacturing, NREL: Steel is used everywhere. It's one of the core building materials that we use in the construction of everything. From the building of larger apartment facilities, condominiums, anything, you have to have steel.

Many of us have had the opportunity to go up and see an iron mine—how they make the pellets that then go on to be used to make steel. I can't say that I've ever been to anything that is as big as that.

They've been making iron at huge facilities for a hundred years.

Why look at it now? Well, the production of iron and steel is energy-intense.

As the world, you know, continues to evolve, all we're seeing is the demand for steel for concrete to continue to increase.

How do you work to improve the energy efficiency?

They can't take their plants offline to do pilot work.

We need to learn how these facilities operate so that we can bring technologies that are very nascent, very early stage, scale them perhaps using these facilities to help kind of fill the gap between research and commercialization.

If we can come up with ways to alternatively produce the iron and steel or to heat them in a different way, you can help potentially improve the energy efficiency.

[Text on screen: Learn more at https://www.nrel.gov/manufacturing.]

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