--- description: Find out why Electra Clean Iron is one of the best inventions of 2024 title: Electra Clean Iron: the 200 Best Inventions of 2024 image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78da6c587bf2be85/698a8a0e9862f573a089ac3b/Clean-iron-production-process.jpeg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Oct 30, 2024 # A New Way To Clean Steel by [Alison Van Houten](/author/alison-van-houten/) ## Alison Van Houten Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close  Tuesday, March 12, 2024 Tuesday, March 12, 2024Chet Strange Making steel, an alloy of iron and carbon, is notoriously polluting. But [Electra](https://www.electra.earth/technology/ "undefined"), a Boulder-based company looking to change that, opened its first pilot plant in 2024 and has already partnered with the largest U.S. steelmaker, Nucor. Electra zeroed in on the iron-refinement step of the process, where 90% of steelmaking’s CO2 emissions occur. "We needed to shift the operating temperature of ironmaking from 1,600°C to a lower temperature so that the process could start and stop quickly and seamlessly integrate with intermittent resources, like wind and solar energy," says CEO and co-founder Sandeep Nijhawan. Electra's renewable-energy-powered process uses an electrochemical hydrometallurgical method at temperatures that are only around 60°C. It’s also found ways to clear major technical hurdles that other attempts at this kind of iron refinement have failed to surmount. Notably it can use ores with low iron content, which avoids global supply-chain strains that have arisen due to an ongoing shortage of higher-purity iron ores. These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2024/7094629/electra-clean-iron/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2024/7094629/electra-clean-iron/"},"headline":"Electra Clean Iron: the 200 Best Inventions of 2024","datePublished":"2024-10-30T11:45:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:27.659Z","description":"Find out why Electra Clean Iron is one of the best inventions of 2024","url":"https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2024/7094629/electra-clean-iron/","keywords":["Tech","E-Commerce","list","franchise","Magazine","best inventions"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78da6c587bf2be85/698a8a0e9862f573a089ac3b/Clean-iron-production-process.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alison Van Houten","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alison-van-houten/"}],"creator":"Alison Van Houten","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78da6c587bf2be85/698a8a0e9862f573a089ac3b/Clean-iron-production-process.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2024/7094629/electra-clean-iron/","name":"Electra Clean Iron: the 200 Best Inventions of 2024"}}]}] ```