Materials Processing Institute is reducing carbon emissions and helping shape the future for Foundation Industries in the UK
Some of the projects the Institute has worked on to support the Foundation Industries have been highlighted in the recent projects booklet published by UKRI.
The Materials Processing Institute supports research, innovation, development and commercialisation in Advanced Materials, Industrial Decarbonisation, the Circular Economy and Digital Technologies.
The Foundation Industries - cement, glass, ceramics, paper, metals and bulk chemicals, are vital for the UK’s manufacturing and construction sectors. Combined, they are worth about £52 billion to the UK economy.
The Transforming Foundation Industries Challenge, part of the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund is investing £66 million in a partnership with UK businesses to develop sustainable technologies that reduce the environmental impact of the Foundation Industries.
This is to ensure that these sectors remain internationally competitive and are ready to meet the government commitment of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation, has up to £8 million from the fund to invest in innovative research and development projects that address resource or energy efficiency of foundation industries.
The Materials Processing Institute has led and collaborated with partners in several projects from the Transforming Foundation industries Challenge.
PROJECTS
1. Best Practice and Heat Recovery in Gas Fired Continuous Furnaces
A cross sector project led by the Materials Processing Institute with project partners, British Steel, Low Carbon Europe Ltd and Wienerberger UK investigating waste heat recovery from furnaces.
https://www.mpiuk.com/news-details.php?news_id=366
2. Upgrading the Value of BOS Slag by Addition of Difficult to Recycle Glass or Slags
In collaboration with industry and research partners, the Materials Processing Institute undertook research to investigate methods of converting steelmaking slag into high-grade road surfacing material. The purpose being to extract best possible value from Steelmaking slag is currently crushed and used in the road construction process, but its use is limited due to its level of skid resistance. The other partners on this project were British Steel Ltd, Glass Futures, Tarmac Trading Ltd and PWS Road Building Services.
https://www.mpiuk.com/news-details.php?news_id=285
3. Novel EAF Composite Feedstock
This project led by Binding Solutions Ltd and supported by the Materials Processing Institute has developed novel, lower energy, composite pellets for Electric Arc Furnaces (EAF). The process will significantly reduce energy emissions in the steelmaking process.
4. SAMRCD - Scalable Additive Manufacturing Rule Creation and Dissemination
This Scalable Additive Manufacturing Rule Creation and Dissemination (SAMRCD) project aims to develop and validate scalable digital tools to identify, create and enforce rules through literature, standards, experiments, and deep learning that reduce direct and indirect energy consumption and increase material efficiency and production of repeatable products in ceramic & metal additive manufacturing ("AM"). The development of the tools proposed within the SAMCRD project will make a profound impact in energy reduction and accelerate additive manufacturing as a viable sustainable production process. This project has been led by Authentise and supported by the Materials Processing Institute, ICD Applied technologies, Photocentric Ltd and TWI Ltd
https://www.mpiuk.com/research-project-samrcd.htm
https://www.mpiuk.com/news-details.php?news_id=378
Shaping the Future for the Foundation Industries in the UK - Projects from Transforming Foundation Industries Challenge, a UKRI Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund programme- See pages 12,15,18 and 28 for more details about the Materials Processing Institute projects.
https://www.ukri.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/UKRI-220622-TFIBrochure_ShapingTheFuture.pdf
8 July 2022
