"Coal plays a couple of roles in conventional steel making - it...

"Coal plays a couple of roles in conventional steel making - it provides heat for the furnaces, and also provides an essential ingredient for the chemical reaction that produces steel. Without getting too technical, metallurgical coal is reduced to a carbon-dense substance called coke. When that coke is put in a blast furnace with iron ore, it acts as a ‘reducing agent’ that removes oxygen from iron ore to leave pure iron, the main ingredient in steel."

Sorry, lost the link to the website where I took that from.

My understanding is the carbon is attached to the oxygen molecules that needs to be removed from the rion ore and that is what produces the masses amounts of CO₂ in a blast furnace - as opposed to the carbon being dissolved into the iron. When using hydrogen instead of coal/carbon, the oxygen attaches to the hydrogen atoms which then makes H₂O or water as the emissions instead of CO₂.

My recollection is that Tim Dobson did a good overview in the recent webinar that could be worth watching to help your understanding of why magnetite ore is needed for the world to transition to green steel. I thought that was going to be recorded and made available to watch later, but I couldn't see it on the MGT website. Does anyone know if its available and can provide a link?