Workers who operate the broiling furnaces that convert iron ore or scrap to steel may think Donald R. Sadoway has rocks in his head -- lunar rocks at that.

	mit.edu Donald R. Sadoway

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and holder of 13 patents, Mr. Sadoway, 55, has researched how NASA might extract oxygen from moon rocks for the space program. He believes that the same process, similar to the way aluminum has been made for more than 100 years, can be used to make iron. Moreover, the process will create another marketable commodity -- oxygen -- instead of polluting carbon gasses, Mr. Sadoway said.

He's not just blowing lunar gas. He's persuaded the American Iron and Steel Institute to take a closer look and to pay him to do the looking. The industry trade group, mindful of growing efforts to tighten industrial plant emission standards, has given Mr. Sadoway $500,000 for a two-year study to see if his concept -- known as molten oxide electrolysis -- can be commercialized.

"We're trying to think out of the box here," said Joseph R. Vehec, the institute administrator overseeing the research.

The roots of Mr. Sadoway's research run back to Charles Martin Hall.

In 1886, the 23-year-old Mr. Hall discovered a way to produce aluminum using electrolysis, running an electric current through a liquid solution of aluminum oxide. The current was delivered through two electrodes, one positive and called the anode, the other negative and called the cathode, inserted into a crucible.

After charging the solution for several hours, Mr. Hall opened the crucible and the aluminum had been extracted from the aluminum oxide. Two years later, Mr. Hall and financier Alfred E. Hunt opened the Pittsburgh Reduction Co. on Smallman Street. Today, their pioneering little company is known as Alcoa, the global aluminum giant.

The process has been modified and refined since then. In the 1980s, Mr. Sadoway and Alcoa conducted separate research on anodes there weren't made of carbon. What they were looking for was an anode that lasted longer and, because it wasn't made of carbon, wouldn't produce carbon gases. While Alcoa is still attempting to commercialize the new anodes, Mr. Sadoway is applying his knowledge of the anodes and electrolysis to making steel.

He intends to dissolve iron oxide in a solution a little thicker than water, much like sugar is dissolved in water. The solution will be fluid enough to conduct electricity discharged by the anodes. What the anodes will be made of is a major topic of his research. Another hurdle is how much of a jolt to deliver. Mr. Sadoway says the iron won't be extracted from the iron oxide if the electric current is too low, but that the walls of the crucible will melt if the current is too high.

Then there's the temperature. While aluminum is smelted at temperatures of less than 1,000 degrees Celsius, Mr. Sadoway expects his process will have to crank it up to 1,500 degrees Celsius or greater.

"No one's ever run electrolysis that high," he said.

Finally, just because the process will work on a small scale, ramping it up to produce a million or more tons annually is another matter.

"It's got to be robust enough to run 24/7 for years," Mr. Sadoway said.

One of Pittsburgh's top materials scientists says that while Mr. Sadoway's twist on electrolysis can work, the global warming angle leaves him a bit cold.

Even if the MIT professor can produce iron and oxygen simultaneously, what about all the greenhouse gasses created by burning coal to generate the electricity needed to run the process, asks Richard J. Fruehan, the U.S. Steel professor of materials science at Carnegie Mellon University.

"His theory is absolutely correct if you don't think about the supply of electricity," Mr. Fruehan says. "It's not reducing the carbon dioxide once you consider the power plant. In fact, it's increasing carbon dioxide."

Mr. Sadoway acknowledges his process will shift the source of pollution from steel mills to coal-powered electric plants. However, it eliminates the need for coke, a baked coal used to fuel iron-producing blast furnaces. Plants that produce coke are perennially on environmental hit lists, so getting rid of them and burning coal in more efficient electric power plants is a better option, he says.

"It's a half ton of carbon [coke] to make a ton of steel. That's all gone," he said.

Mr. Sadoway has two years to figure out if the process is technically feasible on a small scale. If the results are encouraging, much more work would be needed to determine if it can be commercialized.

"I think we're probably looking at at least a 10-year odyssey," he said.

The professor figures if it gets to that point, other scientists can work on new ways of generating electricity without carbon emissions while he figures out how to simultaneously produce steel and oxygen.

"At that point," he said, "steel becomes totally green."