Electric Steelmaking - The New Paradigm for UK Steel Manufacture
The UK market for steel is forecasting strong and sustainable growth across a number of sectors. Despite current turmoil, the UK is well placed to exploit its natural resource of raw materials and intellectual capability, to make a transition to more electric based steel manufacturing
The key technical barriers to electric steelmaking concern achieving product quality specifications, particularly with regard to copper and nitrogen. New technologies have recently been developed that can partly solve these problems and others are being addressed by innovation projects at the Electric Steelmaking Research Centre, part of the Materials Processing Institute at Teesside.
The industry and others have made a specific request to Government to co-invest in the necessary innovation infrastructure and projects, through the Materials Catapult, a proposal from the Materials Processing Institute, TWI and IOM3. In this way the UK can lead Europe by creating the flexible, profitable and innovation led steelmaking industry of the future.
9 May 2016
