Name: Making the Modern World
ISBN: 9781394181223

What Hacker News says

BenGosubDec 2024

In this vein I would also recommend: "Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization" (2014) by Vackav Smil. In this work, Smil explores how these materials have shaped industrial civilization and examines trends in material use, efficiency, and potential future challenges.

Vaclav Smil discusses the main materials used in building the modern world, such as oil, steel, cement, plastics, and ammonia

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dredmorbiusOct 2021

Keep in mind that a gas is roughly 1000x larger than an equivalent solid mass.

So take all the food grown on Earth in a year, multiply it 100x, and multiply that 1,000x, to come up with the volume of gas you'd be dealing with sequestering somehow.

Gas doesn't like being sequestered, less so for hundreds or thousands of years. (Natural gas formations are interesting accidents of geological history in which sufficient source material, methane conversion of that material, and a geological substrate in which that gas is trapped in the earth, all coincide.) There's also the fact that eventually re-introducing that gas to the biosphere is probably beneficial (on the order of tens to hundreds of millions of years), as biologically-active carbon is weathered out of the system (though solar irradiance will also be increasing over this period, and by various accounts, the happy music stops in about 800 million to 1 billion years).

It really is difficult to convey the volumes of resources humans use on an annual basis. Vaclav Smil's books on the topics of energy and material resource uilisation are highly recommended, especially Making the Modern World:

https://www.worldcat.org/title/making-the-modern-world-mater...

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dredmorbiusSep 2021

Smil's books (no final 'e' BTW) are excellent.

His Energy and Civilization (and the earlier (Energy in World History), demonstrate the phenomenal role of energy in bringing about modernity. Making the modern world : materials and dematerialization looks at the material side.

https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3Asmil%2C+vaclav

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dredmorbiusAug 2021

"Ore genesis" is the term of art in geology for how various mineral ores form. Typically this involves a source, transport, and trap. Biological processes can play a major role (iron, limestone).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_genesis

Useful ore deposits tend to be vast, with absoutely immense amounts (many trillions tons) of paydirt. The value of ores are that the minerals of interest are concentrated, sometimes to very high levels (50% or more of total material), though increasingly lower-grade ores (1% concentration or lower) are utilised. This means that you've got to move 99 units of mass for every unit of primary mineral extracted (overburden).

Even very large human formations are small by geological standards. The World Trade Centre towers contained about 200,000 tonnes of steel. That's a lot for humans, but a minuscule amount on a geological scale. (https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/EricChen.shtml)

Current iron ore extraction is on the order of about 2.5 billion tons/year. That's roughly 1/3 ton per person on Earth.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-worlds-metals-and-m...

Vaclav Smil's Making the Modern World goes into depth on material use in contemporary civilisation:

https://www.worldcat.org/title/making-the-modern-world-mater...

(After water and oil, sand and gravel are our most-used material, then concrete and iron/steel.)

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dredmorbiusSep 2019

This could indeed be a big deal. "Coked" coal, or metalurgical coal, accounts for 15% of current (or at least recent-years, the numbers are shifting rapidly as electric generation offloads) global coal use. It's a use that would otherwise be hard to substitute for although there are options.

Previously, the main alternative has been to re-use recycled steel, in electric arc furnaces (hit up https://invido.us for some pretty amazing videos of things going well and/or poorly) which 1) use potentially clean electricity sources and 2) eliminate all coke use. Altneratives to the blast furnace refinement of new steel from iron ore would be a development unprecedented since the introduction of Bessemer process furnaces in the 1860s.

Vaclav Smil writes on many energy and resource topics, and covers steel from both perspectives in his Energy and Civilization and Making the Modern World books. I'd strongly recommend both.

What I'm finding odd with the article is that Bloomberg appear to be principally citing themselves as sources. I'm reviewing literature and there appears to be scientific research dating at least to the 1970s on this topic (that'a a very quick first read by titles).

I'll add possibly relevant links here. Anyone with actual metalurgical knowledge is far better placed to comment than me.

This appears likely the technology in question:

Valentin Vogl, Max Åhman, Lars J. Nilsson, "Assessment of hydrogen direct reduction for fossil-free steelmaking" (2018)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261... (PDF freely available)

Also: "Modelling a new, low CO2 emissions, hydrogen steelmaking process" (2013) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261...

A techno-economic evaluation of the use of hydrogen in a steel production process, utilizing nuclear process heat Authors: L.M.Germeshuizena, P.W.E.Blomb (2013) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2013.06.076 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00406...

Solutions to Hydrogen Attack in Steels (Timmins) addresses the hydrogen embrittlement question: https://www.worldcat.org/title/solutions-to-hydrogen-attack-...

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dredmorbiusAug 2019

Quite honestly, this is as good as any. I'd read the earlier version (Energy and History) previously. His materials book, Making the Modern World, is also an eye-opener.

He covers energy transitions, fertilisers, China, and much else.

Oh, and apparently just published:

https://www.worldcat.org/title/growth-from-microorganisms-to...

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