Reducing Embedded Carbon through Transformation in Foundation Industries (RECTIFI)
A cross-sector collaboration has created an innovative circular supply chain for high-grade green steel and sustainable alternatives for cement production.
Reducing Embedded Carbon through Transformation in Foundation Industries (RECTIFI)
A cross-sector collaboration has created an innovative circular supply chain for high-grade green steel and sustainable alternatives for cement production.
Recycled steel offers numerous benefits to the UK industry. It has 85% lower embedded carbon compared to steel made with virgin materials, and there is increasing demand for its use in many different applications, including electric vehicles and offshore wind turbines.
The UK produces around 11 million tonnes of steel scrap each year – more than enough to make a significant contribution to the 12 million tonnes of steel the nation consumes. However, 80% of that scrap is currently exported, with millions of tonnes of virgin iron ore imported in its place. This is because existing recycling methods are not producing metal that is pure enough to meet the requirements of UK steel makers for high-specification products.
The £10m RECTIFI project explored how scrap recycling processes could be honed to create materials for high-quality green steel. In bringing together partners from the steel, cement and recycling industries, the ground-breaking cross-sector collaboration also developed sustainable alternatives for cement production from the waste streams of those processes.
“RECTIFI looked at how we could improve the separation and segregation of scrap. At the moment, the UK’s scrap industry is optimised to produce steel suitable for reinforcing concrete in construction. This lower-value product contains more impurities, such as chrome and copper, and is unsuitable for the type of high-performance steel required, for example, by car manufacturers,” explains Roger Morton, Director of Innovation at European Metal Recycling (EMR), which led the project. “By removing impurities, we can meet the exacting requirements of UK steel manufacturers. We can also isolate and formulate those ‘waste’ materials to give them value as a raw material for other industries, such as creating lower-carbon impact cement.”
Better scrap separation for green steel
With £3.4m funding from the Transforming Foundation Industries (TFI) challenge, the project aimed to build an innovative circular supply chain that could help the UK’s foundation industries reduce waste, carbon emissions and reliance on imports.
EMR designed and implemented new separation facilities for recycled steel and minerals. The company worked with Tata Steel and Swansea University to experiment with configuring the upgraded line, which was built over the two-year project from producing a few tonnes to 1000-tonne trains of high-grade scrap.
Richie Hart, Process Technology Manager at Tata Steel, explains: “In test batches, we incorporated 50 tonnes of the scrap supplied by EMR into our 320-tonne steelmaking vessel. With Swansea University, we could analyse the chemistry of the steel produced, so EMR could identify where contamination was coming from and optimise their process accordingly to improve scrap quality. Our aim is to incorporate 75% scrap into our production.”
“It makes sense in terms of the economy, environment and resource security for us to use scrap, not export it.”
Giving value to materials destined for landfill
EMR also worked in parallel with its partners to develop alternative raw materials for cement production from the waste streams of metal recycling and steelmaking processes. “The materials that enter our recycling sites are not pure; steel fence posts, for example, will arrive still attached to concrete bases, and cars have glass and plastics. We recover a lot of those materials, but a surprisingly large percentage of the ‘fines’ – a mineral-rich dust – are sent to landfill,” explains Morton.
EMR worked with specialist waste management firm Darlow Lloyd & Sons and cement manufacturer Aggregate Industries to optimise the composition of mineral-rich fines for use as a more sustainable clinker for cement. It can potentially help decarbonise both industries and create value for the waste stream.
Creating more resilient supply chains
The success of RECTIFI means major manufacturers in two foundation industries now have a greater supply of higher quality, lower embedded carbon, recycled materials to supplement virgin materials – potentially preventing almost five million tonnes of CO2 equivalent from entering the earth’s atmosphere each year.
For Aggregate Industries, it offers the opportunity to produce more sustainable cement products that are in high demand from the construction industry in the UK and overseas. For Tata Steel UK, the project demonstrates the supply chain’s ability to produce the huge quantities of high-grade recycled materials required by the industry’s new electric arc furnace (EAF) as it transitions away from blast furnaces.
The project has been vital for building collaboration between partners, says Morton: “Ramping up production to meet the scrap needs of EAFs will require millions of pounds of investment in our facilities. RECTIFI demonstrated that producing that much high-quality scrap was technically and commercially viable and that those greater quantities could be introduced to steel manufacturing.
“We’ve built a technical trust between industries that have historically traded at arm’s length with high levels of secrecy regarding their processes and specifications. This is vital to providing the confidence for all parties to make the investments needed.”
Importantly, increasing the use of recycled materials could add resilience to supply chains currently dependent on steel and iron ore imports. “Recent world events have demonstrated that this is a precarious position for any manufacturing economy to be in,” says Morton. “Unlike most European countries, we have a huge surplus of scrap. It makes sense in terms of the economy, environment and resource security for us to use that scrap, not export it.”
Giving value to materials destined for landfill
EMR also worked in parallel with its partners to develop alternative raw materials for cement production from the waste streams of metal recycling and steelmaking processes. “The materials that enter our recycling sites are not pure; steel fence posts, for example, will arrive still attached to concrete bases, and cars have glass and plastics. We recover a lot of those materials, but a surprisingly large percentage of the ‘fines’ – a mineral-rich dust – are sent to landfill,” explains Morton.
EMR worked with specialist waste management firm Darlow Lloyd & Sons and cement manufacturer Aggregate Industries to optimise the composition of mineral-rich fines for use as a more sustainable clinker for cement. It can potentially help decarbonise both industries and create value for the waste stream.
Creating more resilient supply chains
The success of RECTIFI means major manufacturers in two foundation industries now have a greater supply of higher quality, lower embedded carbon, recycled materials to supplement virgin materials – potentially preventing almost five million tonnes of CO2 equivalent from entering the earth’s atmosphere each year.
For Aggregate Industries, it offers the opportunity to produce more sustainable cement products that are in high demand from the construction industry in the UK and overseas. For Tata Steel UK, the project demonstrates the supply chain’s ability to produce the huge quantities of high-grade recycled materials required by the industry’s new electric arc furnace (EAF) as it transitions away from blast furnaces.
The project has been vital for building collaboration between partners, says Morton: “Ramping up production to meet the scrap needs of EAFs will require millions of pounds of investment in our facilities. RECTIFI demonstrated that producing that much high-quality scrap was technically and commercially viable and that those greater quantities could be introduced to steel manufacturing.
“We’ve built a technical trust between industries that have historically traded at arm’s length with high levels of secrecy regarding their processes and specifications. This is vital to providing the confidence for all parties to make the investments needed.”
Importantly, increasing the use of recycled materials could add resilience to supply chains currently dependent on steel and iron ore imports. “Recent world events have demonstrated that this is a precarious position for any manufacturing economy to be in,” says Morton. “Unlike most European countries, we have a huge surplus of scrap. It makes sense in terms of the economy, environment and resource security for us to use that scrap, not export it.”
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