Boston United States based company developing Molten Oxide Electrolysis based technology to fully decarbonize steel production Boston Metal has announced the USD 120 million first close of Series C fundraising led by multinational steel company ArcelorMittal. Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund and SiteGround Capital also joined as new investors in this round, alongside current investors. ArcelorMittal’s lead investment was made through its XCarb Innovation Fund. ArcelorMittal CEO Mr Aditya Mittal said “In Boston Metal, we are investing in a team that has made impressive progress over a relatively short period of time, developing a technology that has exciting potential to revolutionize steelmaking. In our extensive discussions with them, we have been impressed by the passion and vision they have to contribute to the decarbonization of steelmaking. They are an exciting and welcome addition to the XCarb Innovation Fund’s portfolio.”

Boston Metal’s patented Molten Oxide Electrolysis process is being commercialized to produce both green steel and high-value metals, such as tin and niobium. The Series C funds will expand the production of green steel at the company’s pilot facility outside Boston and will support the site selection and preliminary design of its first green steel plant. The new resources will also support the construction and commissioning of a manufacturing facility for high-value metals at the company’s Brazilian subsidiary, Boston Metal do Brasil.

Molten Oxide Electrolysis converts even low- and mid-grade iron ore fines directly into high-purity molten iron. This enables the broadest possible supply of feedstock and protects against the price volatility of premium ores. This simplified process eliminates the need for coke production, iron ore processing, blast furnace reduction, and basic oxygen furnace refinement. Molten Oxide Electrolysis platform works with all iron ore grades and does not require process water, hazardous chemicals, or rare-metal catalysts to operate.

About the size of a school bus, Boston Metal’s modular Molten Oxide Electrolysis cells can be scaled up to meet production capacity targets from thousands to millions of tonnes of output for a customized steel manufacturing solution thus reducing investments

The startup’s core technology was invented at MIT in Professor Donald Sadoway’s lab. In the early 1980s, Prof Donald Sadoway’s MIT laboratory began research on an inert anode for aluminum manufacturing. In the late 1980s, he conceived of an electrolytic cell for the production of iron, and Molten Oxide Electrolysis was born. Professor Sadoway tested the MOE process using lunar-like soil from Meteor Crater in Arizona, which contains iron oxide from an asteroid impact thousands of years ago, finding that it produced steel as a byproduct. Professor Sadoway’s method used an iridium anode, but since iridium is expensive and supplies are limited, that’s not a viable approach for bulk steel production on Earth. But after more research and input from Allanore, the MIT team identified an inexpensive chromium-based alloy that can replace the iridium anode in molten oxide electrolysis in 2013. The anode stability is due to the formation of an electronically conductive solid solution of chromium and aluminium oxides in the corundum structure. These findings make practicable larger-scale evaluation of MOE for the production of steel, and potentially provide a key material component enabling mitigation of greenhouse-gas emissions while producing metal of superior metallurgical quality.

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