The Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) has awarded the Steel and Metals Institute (SaMI) at Swansea University £3 million of capital funding to support its vision of delivering a 21st-century steel industry.

This will enable SaMI (www.samiswansea.co.uk) to help the UK iron and steel industry to transform into a low-carbon and resource-efficient sector using societal waste, such as plastics that are currently non-recyclable.

The focus will be on smart steel processing for high-value products, including steels for electrically 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 that the UK steel industry remains competitive in the ‘fourth industrial age’, able to produce the bulk of the steel needed domestically.

The HEFCW funding will support five key areas of research: carbon-neutral steel-making; advanced alloy optimisation; performance in extreme environments; novel functional metallic coatings; and imaging science.

The research will be undertaken by technology and innovation experts from numerous organisations working together with SaMI.

Brian Edy, SaMI director, said: “This funding 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 is important, but we also need to look at what can be done to reduce societal waste.”

“What is perhaps less obvious is that the blast furnace steel-making process can be used to solve societal waste problems, by substituting coal with waste materials that contain carbon — such as plastics; this already happens in Japan and Germany.

"We can also make insulation materials for buildings out of slag waste from the steel-making process instead of combustible plastic foams, and 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 help us to develop these innovative ideas further.”