Innovations in Alloy Production

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This chapter examines the historical and modern significance of metal alloys, focusing on the evolution of production techniques from the Bronze Age to present-day advancements. It highlights a new single-step process using hydrogen for alloy creation, detailing its environmental benefits and the imperative for cleaner manufacturing methods. The discussion also includes a case study on Invar, exploring its unique properties and the challenges of efficient metal extraction from oxides.

In this episode:

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09:44 Research Highlights

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12:26 A sustainable, one-step method for alloy production

Making metal alloys is typically a multi-step process that creates huge amounts of emissions. Now, a team demonstrates a way to create these materials in a single step, which they hope could significantly reduce the environmental burdens associated with their production. In a lab demonstration, they use their technique to create an alloy of nickel and iron called invar — a widely-used material that has a high carbon-footprint. The team show evidence that their method can produce invar to a quality that rivals that of conventional manufacturing, and suggest their technique is scalable to create alloys at an industrial scale.

Research article: Wei et al.

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