image: Picture: (left to right) Mr Bimlendra Jha, Chief Executive Officer Tata Steel UK, Professor Richard B Davies, Vice-Chancellor, Swansea University and Carwyn Jones First Minister of Wales. view more
Credit: Swansea University
Steel is the world's most used and recyclable advanced material and underpins the UK manufacturing base. Swansea University is therefore delighted that the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) has awarded the Steel and Metals Institute (SaMI) £3million of capital funding to support its vision of delivering a 21st century steel industry.
This funding will enable SaMI to help the UK iron and steel making industry to transform into a low carbon, resource efficient sector utilising societal waste, such as plastics, which are currently non-recyclable.
The focus of the additional funding will be on smart steel processing of high value products, including steels for electric powered vehicles, manufactured affordable CO2-positive buildings and sustainable packaging that can only be delivered through the use of steel. The aim is to ensure the UK steel industry remains competitive in the fourth industrial age, able to produce the bulk of the steel needed within our own shores.
This funding supports five key areas of research ie carbon neutral steelmaking, advanced alloy optimisation, performance in extreme environments, novel functional metallic coatings and imaging science.
The research will be delivered by technology and innovation experts from numerous leading and diverse organisations working together with and at the Steel and Metals Institute who will deliver the research needed to bring these products and processes to industry.
The facilities at the Institute (SaMI) will provide both research-scale and key process scale-up equipment prior to commercialisation.
Brian Edy, Director of the Steels and Metals Institute said:
"The funding delivered to SaMI through HEFCW represents the early steps in transforming ideas into reality, creating a 21st Century steel and metals industry and future-proofing steel in Wales and the UK."
"Bringing new products and processes to industry are important but we also need to look at what can be done to reduce societal waste, whilst improving the health and well being of our regions."
"What is perhaps less obvious is that the blast furnace steel making process can be used to solve societal waste problems through substituting coal with waste materials that contain carbon (such as plastics). This is quickly attainable and already happens in Japan and Germany."
"What is new is how we could then use process by products as resources. We can make insulation materials for buildings out of slag waste from the steel making process instead of combustible plastic foams, we can recover heat energy to heat homes and begin to transform steel works into renewable energy hubs for solar, wind and thermoelectric power."
"The HEFCW funding will go some way to helping us to develop these innovative ideas further."
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Picture 1: (left to right) Mr Bimlendra Jha, Chief Executive Officer Tata Steel UK, Professor Richard B Davies, Vice-Chancellor, Swansea University and Carwyn Jones First Minister of Wales
Picture 2: (left to right) Professor Richard B Davies, Vice-Chancellor, Swansea University, Mr Bimlendra Jha, Chief Executive Officer Tata Steel UK and Carwyn Jones First Minister of Wales.
Note
- The Steel and Metals Institute (SaMI) at Swansea University was opened by the First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones on 8 February http://www.swansea.ac.uk/press-office/news-archive/2018/creatinga21stcenturysteelandmetalsindustry.php
- For more information about SaMI go to http://www.samiswansea.co.uk or @SaMI_Swansea.
- HEFCW's budget expenditure for 2017-18 included £5.9m of capital funding which has been allocated to fund projects that will either directly leverage external competitive match funding, to allow HEIs in Wales to participate in high-value UK-wide projects, or proposals that will leverage or enhance funding from internal sources.
- Swansea University is a world-class, research-led, dual campus university. The University was established in 1920 and was the first campus university in the UK. It currently offers around 350 undergraduate courses and 350 postgraduate courses to circa 20,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students.
The University's 46-acre Singleton Park Campus is located in beautiful parkland with views across Swansea Bay. The University's 65-acre science and innovation Bay Campus, which opened in September 2015, is located a few miles away on the eastern approach to the city. It has the distinction of having direct access to a beach and its own seafront promenade. Both campuses are close to the Gower Peninsula, the UK's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
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In 2017, Swansea University became the top university in Wales in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide league table, and also won the inaugural Welsh University of the Year title.
It is also ranked within the top 300 best universities in the world in the Times Higher Education World University rankings 2018.
The results of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 showed the University has achieved its ambition to be a top 30 research University, soaring up the league table to 26th in the UK, with the 'biggest leap among research-intensive institutions' (Times Higher Education, December 2014) in the UK.
The University has been awarded a Silver rating in the inaugural Teaching Excellence Framework in 2017. In the assessment the University was commended for the high proportions of students from all backgrounds achieving excellent outcomes such as progressing on to professional level employment or further study.
The University has ambitious expansion plans as it moves towards its centenary in 2020, as it continues to extend its global reach and realising its domestic and international ambitions.
Swansea University is a registered charity. No.1138342. Visit http://www.swansea.ac.uk.
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For more information, please contact Janis Pickwick, Swansea University Press Office. Tel: 01792 295050 or email: j.m.pickwick@swansea.ac.uk
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