Professor Mark Rainforth to give the Bessemer Lecture at the 8th Postgraduate Research Symposium on Ferrous Metallurgy
Professor Mark Rainforth, University of Sheffield, awarded the Bessemer Gold Medal for 2024, will be giving the Bessemer Lecture at the 8th Postgraduate Research Symposium on Ferrous Metallurgy, on 25th February at Armourers Hall, London.
PRESENTATION –
“Designing steel for a sustainable low carbon future”
1,892 million tonnes of crude steel were produced last year, with 21GJ of energy consumed per tonne of steel produced and 1.91 tonnes of CO2 emitted, contributing 7-9% of the world’s CO2 emission. This position is not sustainable and the move towards “green steel” is gathering considerable pace, with some consumers (e.g. automotive) demanding a green steel supply. This is not just a challenge of emission, but also we face major future challenges as key elements will be increasingly in short supply with the current price volatility getting much worse.
The availability and sustainability of green steel is critical in delivering a low-carbon energy economy through applications such as wind turbines, the hydrogen economy, fusion power, EV transport, construction and so on. Addressing sustainability in steel production and use requires that steels be designed specifically to reduce reliance on strategic and scarce elements, for recycling and for disruptive manufacturing technologies that minimise waste.
In this lecture I will address the major challenges and success stories in green steel production. The talk will take examples of how, by taking sustainability as a starting point, steels can be designed to give improved properties, but with less reliance on critical elements and lower CO2 emissions in their manufacture. Specific case studies will come from designing lean steels for ultra-high strength to give weight saving technologies in automotive, the challenges in steel quality in switching from BOS steel to Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) steel making, designing steel for Fusion Power Reactors and designing steels for the hydrogen economy.
Biography
Professor Mark Rainforth took a first class BMet degree from the Department of Metallurgy in Sheffield in 1984 then joining British Steel in Rotherham and later at TI Research Hinxton Hall. After a PhD in 1990, he was appointed Lecturer in the Department of Materials in Sheffield in 1989, was promoted to a Personal Chair in 2000, was Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering between 2011-15 and was appointed the POSCO Professor of Iron and Steel in 2021.
Professor Rainforth led the £3m EPSRC grant “Designing Alloys for Resource Efficiency” (DARE) and co-investigator on the EPSRC Programme Grants £5m “Hydrogen in Metals (HEmS)”. He is currently Sheffield PI on the EPSRC Future Steel Manufacturing Hub, SUSTAIN (£10.6m). He has published over 400 ISI journal papers, publishing extensively in the top journals, including Nature, Science, Science Advances, Acta Materialia, Scripta Materialia, Scientific Reports and Proc Royal Soc (attracting over 1000 citations per year), one textbook and numerous invited presentations at leading international conferences around the globe.
Professor Rainforth was elected a Fellow Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2016. He is the winner of the IOM3’s 2024 Bessemer Gold Medal, Verulam Medal and Prize and the Rosenhain Medal.
The Postgraduate Research Symposium on Ferrous Metallurgy is organised by the Materials Processing Institute and supported by the Armourers & Brasiers’ Company and the Iron & Steel Society of IOM3. This symposium gives universities, researchers, and businesses the opportunity to find out about the latest thinking in ferrous metallurgy.
For more about the symposium and to register to attend click the following link: https://www.mpiuk.com/postgraduate-research-symposium.htm
27 January 2025
