The Transforming the Foundation Industries Challenge has set out the background of the six foundation industries; cement, ceramics, chemicals, glass, metals and paper, which produce 28 Mt pa (75% of all materials in our economy) with a value of £52Bn but also create 10% of UK CO2 emissions. These materials industries are the root of all supply chains providing fundamental products into the industrial sector, often in vertically-integrated fashion. They have a number of common factors: they are water, resource and energy-intensive, often needing high temperature processing; they share processes such as grinding, heating and cooling; they produce high-volume, often pernicious waste streams, including heat; and they have low profit margins, making them vulnerable to energy cost changes and to foreign competition. Our Vision is to build a proactive, multidisciplinary research and practice driven Research and Innovation Hub that optimises the flows of all resources within and between the FIs. The Hub will work with communities where the industries are located to assist the UK in achieving its Net Zero 2050 targets, and transform these industries into modern manufactories which are non-polluting, resource efficient and attractive places to be employed. TransFIRe is a consortium of 20 investigators from 12 institutions, 49 companies and 14 NGO and government organisations related to the sectors, with expertise across the FIs as well as energy mapping, life cycle and sustainability, industrial symbiosis, computer science, AI and digital manufacturing, management, social science and technology transfer. TransFIRe will initially focus on three major challenges: 1 Transferring best practice - applying "Gentani": Across the FIs there are many processes that are similar, e.g. comminution, granulation, drying, cooling, heat exchange, materials transportation and handling. Using the philosophy Gentani (minimum resource needed to carry out a process) this research would benchmark and identify best practices considering resource efficiencies (energy, water etc.) and environmental impacts (dust, emissions etc.) across sectors and share information horizontally. 2 Where there's muck there's brass - creating new materials and process opportunities. Key to the transformation of our Foundation Industries will be development of smart, new materials and processes that enable cheaper, lower-energy and lower-carbon products. Through supporting a combination of fundamental research and focused technology development, the Hub will directly address these needs. For example, all sectors have material waste streams that could be used as raw materials for other sectors in the industrial landscape with little or no further processing. There is great potential to add more value by "upcycling" waste by further processes to develop new materials and alternative by-products from innovative processing technologies with less environmental impact. This requires novel industrial symbioses and relationships, sustainable and circular business models and governance arrangements. 3 Working with communities - co-development of new business and social enterprises. Large volumes of warm air and water are produced across the sectors, providing opportunities for low grade energy capture. Collaboratively with communities around FIs, we will identify the potential for co-located initiatives (district heating, market gardening etc.). This research will highlight issues of equality, diversity and inclusiveness, investigating the potential from societal, environmental, technical, business and governance perspectives. Added value to the project comes from the £3.5 M in-kind support of materials and equipment and use of manufacturing sites for real-life testing as well as a number of linked and aligned PhDs/EngDs from HEIs and partners This in-kind support will offer even greater return on investment and strongly embed the findings and operationalise them within the sector.

This project aims to compare the energy used in traditional foundry processes and a novel single shot foundry technology, CRIMSON, and to develop a model of the processes that encapsulates the energy content at each stage. This model can then be used to persuade casting designers to use more energy-efficient processes which consider casting quality as well as design flexibility. The UK retains a globally recognised casting expertise, in copper, aluminium and new light-metal alloys that underpins many competitive, technology-based industries vital to keep the UK's aerospace and automotive base ahead of the competition. These industries draw on advanced R&D work carried out by Birmingham's high-profile Casting Research Group.The University of Birmingham has been at the leading edge of casting R&D for many years. Today, it is internationally acknowledged as a front runner, and the CRIMSON technique - Constrained Rapid Induction Melting Single Shot method - is one such technology which is helping the casting industry make a step-change in product quality, manufacturing responsiveness and energy use.A typical light-metal foundry will tend to work in the following way: from 100 kg to several tonnes of metal is melted in a first furnace, held at about 700 oC in a second, transferred into a ladle and finally poured into the casting mould. It can take a shift (8 hours) to use all the melt in a typical batch and any leftover unused melt is poured off to be used again, or becomes scrap. Quality issues also arise, which must be mitigated: during the time for which the melt is held at temperature, atmospheric water is reduced to hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is highly soluble in the metal at this temperature, but as the casting cools and solidifies, the gas is ejected into bubbles. The bubbles become porosity in the solid casting and have a detrimental effect on performance, therefore, as much gas must be removed as possible from the melt. The oxygen forms a thin layer of oxide on the melt surface, which is then inevitably entrained in the liquid metal when it is transferred between the different furnaces and when the metal is finally poured. The oxide layer (or bi-film) is now an inclusion which, again, has a detrimental effect on the material properties. The longer the metal is held liquid, the more hydrogen is absorbed and the thicker the oxide becomes on the surface.At each stage of the process there are energy losses due to oxidation and furnace inefficiencies, casting yields and eventually scrap. So from an initial theoretical 1.1 GJ/tonne required tomelt aluminium it is possible to estimate that each tonne of aluminium castings shipped will actually use about 182 GJ/tonne.Instead of going through this batch process, the CRIMSON method uses a high-powered furnace to melt just enough metal to fill a single mould, in one go, in a closed crucible. It transfers the crucible into an up-casting station for highly computer-controlled filling of the mould, against gravity, for an optimum filling and solidification regime. The CRIMSON method therefore only holds the liquid aluminium for a minimum of time thus drastically reducing the energy losses attributed to hold the metal at temperature. With the rapid melting times achieved, of the order of minutes, there isn't a long time at temperature for hydrogen to be absorbed or for thick layers of oxide to form. The metal is never allowed to fall under gravity and therefore any oxide formed is not entrained within the liquid. Thus higher quality castings are produced, leading to a reduction in scrap rate and therefore reduced overall energy losses.The first challenge in the project is to measure accurately the energy used at each stage in each of the processes investigated and to calculate the energy losses from oxidation and scrap. The second challenge is to incorporate this information into a model that can be used by casting designers and foundry engineers.

This project aims to compare the energy used in traditional foundry processes and a novel single shot foundry technology, CRIMSON, and to develop a model of the processes that encapsulates the energy content at each stage. This model can then be used to persuade casting designers to use more energy-efficient processes which consider casting quality as well as design flexibility. The UK retains a globally recognised casting expertise, in copper, aluminium and new light-metal alloys that underpins many competitive, technology-based industries vital to keep the UK's aerospace and automotive base ahead of the competition. These industries draw on advanced R&D work carried out by Birmingham's high-profile Casting Research Group.The University of Birmingham has been at the leading edge of casting R&D for many years. Today, it is internationally acknowledged as a front runner, and the CRIMSON technique - Constrained Rapid Induction Melting Single Shot method - is one such technology which is helping the casting industry make a step-change in product quality, manufacturing responsiveness and energy use.A typical light-metal foundry will tend to work in the following way: from 100 kg to several tonnes of metal is melted in a first furnace, held at about 700 oC in a second, transferred into a ladle and finally poured into the casting mould. It can take a shift (8 hours) to use all the melt in a typical batch and any leftover unused melt is poured off to be used again, or becomes scrap. Quality issues also arise, which must be mitigated: during the time for which the melt is held at temperature, atmospheric water is reduced to hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is highly soluble in the metal at this temperature, but as the casting cools and solidifies, the gas is ejected into bubbles. The bubbles become porosity in the solid casting and have a detrimental effect on performance, therefore, as much gas must be removed as possible from the melt. The oxygen forms a thin layer of oxide on the melt surface, which is then inevitably entrained in the liquid metal when it is transferred between the different furnaces and when the metal is finally poured. The oxide layer (or bi-film) is now an inclusion which, again, has a detrimental effect on the material properties. The longer the metal is held liquid, the more hydrogen is absorbed and the thicker the oxide becomes on the surface.At each stage of the process there are energy losses due to oxidation and furnace inefficiencies, casting yields and eventually scrap. So from an initial theoretical 1.1 GJ/tonne required tomelt aluminium it is possible to estimate that each tonne of aluminium castings shipped will actually use about 182 GJ/tonne.Instead of going through this batch process, the CRIMSON method uses a high-powered furnace to melt just enough metal to fill a single mould, in one go, in a closed crucible. It transfers the crucible into an up-casting station for highly computer-controlled filling of the mould, against gravity, for an optimum filling and solidification regime. The CRIMSON method therefore only holds the liquid aluminium for a minimum of time thus drastically reducing the energy losses attributed to hold the metal at temperature. With the rapid melting times achieved, of the order of minutes, there isn't a long time at temperature for hydrogen to be absorbed or for thick layers of oxide to form. The metal is never allowed to fall under gravity and therefore any oxide formed is not entrained within the liquid. Thus higher quality castings are produced, leading to a reduction in scrap rate and therefore reduced overall energy losses.The first challenge in the project is to measure accurately the energy used at each stage in each of the processes investigated and to calculate the energy losses from oxidation and scrap. The second challenge is to incorporate this information into a model that can be used by casting designers and foundry engineers.

The aim of the this project is to introduce the concept of "small is beautiful" into a conservative relatively low technology manufacturing sector where the "economies of scale" argument has been used for the last decade to build ever more so-called efficient process lines. This will be a major challenge. The new philosophy, "small is beautiful", starts by encouraging the use of high quality feedstock, only melting what is required and only when it is required. Recycling of internal scrap is not necessarily acceptable but an aim for higher yields is. Applying counter gravity casting methods to improve yield and give enhanced quality is encouraged as is the recovery low grade heat from solidification. The project will achieve this by the development of a software tool incorporating a new philosophy/methodology and metric for the handling of materials and energy throughout the process in foundries using computer numerical process simulation to support the decision making. The project would also look at the full energy chain from charge materials through to waste heat and energy in the process and identify the opportunities for scavenging waste heat and the costs associated with the whole process. This will therefore enable cost/benefit analysis to be undertaken so that companies will be able to make informed decisions about design, material and process at a very early stage.

EPSRC's EngD was successfully modernised by WMG in 2011 with radical ideas on how high-level skills should be implemented to address the future needs of manufacturing companies within the UK and globally. In a continual rise to the challenge of a low environmental impact future, our new proposed Centre goes a step further, delivering a future generation of manufacturing business leaders with high level know-how and research experience that is essential to compete in a global environment defined by high impact and low carbon. Our proposed Centre spans the area of Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing. It will cover a wide remit of activity necessary to bring about long term real world manufacturing impacts in critical UK industries. We will focus upon novel research areas including the harnessing of biotechnology in manufacturing, sustainable chemistry, resource efficient manufacturing and high tech, low resource approaches to manufacturing. We will also develop innovative production processes that allow new feedstocks to be utilised, facilitate dematerialisation and light weighting of existing approaches or enable new products to be made. Research will be carried into areas including novel production technologies, additive layer manufacturing, net shape and near-net shape manufacturing. We will further deliver materials technologies that allow the substitution of traditional materials with novel and sustainable alternatives or enable the utilisation of materials with greater efficiency in current systems. We will also focus upon reducing the inputs (e.g. energy and water) and impacting outputs (e.g. CO2 and effluents) through innovative process and product design and value recovery from wastes. Industry recognises there is an increasing and time-critical need to turn away from using non-sustainable manufacturing feed-stocks and soon we will need to move from using processes that are perceived publically, and known scientifically, to be environmentally detrimental if we are to sustain land/water resources and reduce our carbon footprint. To achieve this, UK PLC needs to be more efficient with its resources, developing a more closed-loop approach to resource use in manufacturing whilst reducing the environmental impact of associated manufacturing processes. We will need to train a whole new generation of doctoral level students capable of working across discipline and cultural boundaries who, whilst working with industry on relevant TRL 1-5 research, can bring about these long term changes. Our Centre will address industrially challenging issues that enable individuals and their sponsoring companies to develop and implement effective low environmental impact solutions that benefit the 'bottom line'. Research achievements and enhanced skills capabilities in Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing will help insure businesses against uncertainty in the supply of materials and price volatility in global markets and enable them to use their commitment to competitively differentiate themselves.