Clean steels are fundamental materials for heavy industry and advanced equipments. The requirement for the cleanliness of steels has increased drastically due to the development high speed transportation and smart devises. The conventional clean steel processing technologies cannot meet the new requirement and are also energy intensive. The proposal will develop a novel processing method for the production of super clean steel with significantly reduced energy cost.

Since the Industrial Revolution, mankind has started to heavily interfere with the natural carbon cycle by extracting and burning increasingly larger amounts of fossil fuels, which has led to release huge amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, causing climate change. In order to mitigate the effects of climate change, the recently established Paris Agreement sets the goal of limiting the rise in the average global temperature to 2 degrees by 2100. This will require keeping cumulative CO2 emissions from all anthropogenic sources since year 1860 to less than 840 gigatons of carbon. If global carbon emissions continue to grow as they have in the last decade, the 2 degrees carbon budget will be spent by year 2035. This dictates to look for alternative energy sources and sustainable processes to enable the transition to a low-carbon economy. CO2 capture, storage and utilisation (CCSU) is regarded as one of the key technologies to reduce CO2 emissions while fossil fuels are progressively phased out. Adoption of this technology on a large scale depends on its efficiency and economic viability, demanding the constant development of new materials able to combine excellent performances with long-term stability and affordability. The ideal sorbent for CO2 capture (CC) should have high mass uptake capacity, be selective towards CO2 over other gases, be able to be regenerated with a low energy penalty and be stable over various working cycles. CC from large point sources, such as coal- or gas-fired power plants and industrial facilities, is the most attractive option. These sources are responsible for about half of the global emissions and they generate concentrated CO2 streams that are easier to treat, if compared with direct air CO2 capture. This project aims at developing new solid sorbents for CC by exploiting defects in zirconium-based metal-organic frameworks (Zr-MOFs) to functionalise them with a wide range of amino groups. Zr-MOFs are a class of crystalline and highly porous materials constructed from the connection of hexanuclear zirconium oxide-hydroxide clusters and carboxylate linkers. They are attractive for their remarkable stability, especially in the presence of water, which makes them suitable for practical applications. The CO2 adsorption capacity of bare Zr-MOFs is moderate, if compared to that of other sorbents. Functionalisation of Zr-MOFs using organic linkers with pending amino groups or through grafting of ethanolamine to the metal clusters has been demonstrated to increase their affinity for CO2. However, these methods are rather limited in scope. Defects in Zr-MOFs are reactive sites and can be exploited to introduce functional groups that cannot be otherwise inserted in the porous structure. Functionalisation of defective Zr-MOFs with amino groups of different nature (aliphatic, aromatic, heterocyclic) will allow to investigate and evaluate the influence of a large set of parameters on their CC performances. The resulting defect-engineered MOFs will be a library of novel, stable and versatile solid sorbents with tuneable physical-chemical properties for application in CC. Tata Steel will be part of this project as an industrial partner. This will provide an excellent case study for the proposed research, because the steelworks in Port Talbot are the largest industrial CO2 emitter in the UK and Tata Steel is committed to address this issue. The materials developed during this project will be tested in conditions relevant to CC from blast furnace gas. This gas is mainly composed of N2 (45-50%), CO (20-25%), CO2 (20-25%) and H2 (0-5%) and is normally flared, due to its low calorific value. Removal of CO2 would allow to recycle the CO-rich stream in the blast furnace for reduction of iron ore and to convert the captured CO2 into useful chemicals.

Steel is a vitally important structural material, critical for infrastructure, transport, communications networks, water, energy and waste utilities. Future advances in key manufacturing sectors rely on new, innovative steel products. A successful steel industry must be able to deliver such innovation quickly to (i) satisfy customer requirements and (ii) grow its business. The conventional steelmaking innovation cycle is slow and iterative, requiring expensive trials using hundreds of tonnes of material, representing significant financial risk and limiting opportunities to investigate radically different alloys with disruptive solutions. Imagination and creativity are therefore inhibited. The proposed solution: This Prosperity Partnership will implement a Rapid Alloy Prototyping (RAP) process, analogous to the high-throughput methodologies used in the pharmaceutical industry. Instead of using tens of industrial scale ingots (tonnes) per alloy, large numbers (hundreds) of small laboratory scale samples (grams) of different steel alloy combinations will be tested for properties, processability and characterised using state-of-the-art imaging. In addition computer modelling will be used to design new compositions and predict through process behaviour. The efficacy of the method will be demonstrated by comparison to existing production data for established benchmark steel grades. The RAP process will provide a rapid screening and ranking methodology for promising new alloys leading to quicker promotion from lab-scale tests (grams) to progressive upscaling tests (tens of kilograms). Alloys performing in the upscaling tests can then be promoted to full scale manufacturing (tonnes) resulting in an order of magnitude speed-up in the innovation cycle for new steel products. Industry involvement from Tata Steel in the Partnership is essential at all decision points to ensure (i) the processability of new alloys on existing plant equipment, (ii) new alloys satisfy commercial requirements and (iii) to maintain research focus on commercially relevant alloys which will boost UK Prosperity. However, while this industrial 'reality check' is vital it does not preclude the investigation of more adventurous unorthodox alloys normally not considered. Indeed, the proposed RAP approach will widen the scope for discovery of new alloys at little or no risk to Tata Steel. Currently 20% of primary steel comes from scrap steel which introduces impurity elements into the final product (e.g. Sn and Cu). The global trend of increasing scrap-use means there is an urgent need to prepare the UK and identify future opportunities. It is impossible for Tata Steel to carry out conventional plant trials to investigate the influence of increasing impurity elements from scrap-use, as thousands of tonnes of unsellable material would need to be cast at a high cost and possibly damage valuable assets. The RAP process will allow a comprehensive assessment of increased impurity effects on processing and properties of current and new steel products by simulating increased scrap use, as well as developing the fundamental understanding on these effects. Benefit to the UK Economy The ability to manufacture steel remains essential for a modern industrial economy. Tata Steel directly employs 8000 people in the UK and makes around 15,000 different steel products. In 2017 Tata sold directly to 200 customers in the UK and indirectly to over 1000 through stockists. The UK manufacturing sector employs 2.6M people and will benefit from provision of new steel grades with enhanced and tailored properties. This Prosperity Partnership is aligned to the clean growth agenda of the Industrial Strategy and the EPSRC Prosperity Outcomes, contributing to a Productive Nation. The increased ability of Tata Steel to react to global socio-economic conditions with new and innovative steel products arising from the proposed RAP process is aligned with the Resilient Nation outcome

Clean steels are fundamental materials for heavy industry and advanced equipments. The requirement for the cleanliness of steels has increased drastically due to the development high speed transportation and smart devises. The conventional clean steel processing technologies cannot meet the new requirement and are also energy intensive. The proposal will develop a novel processing method for the production of super clean steel with significantly reduced energy cost.

Steel is the most used material in the world by value and second most used by weight (after concrete), it is also one of the most recyclable materials. In 2013 about 12 million tonnes of steel were manufactured in the UK, the majority at large integrated works such as the Tata Steel plants at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe. Energy constitutes a significant portion of the cost of steel production, from 20% to 40% depending on the plant. Whilst the amount of energy required to produce a tonne of steel has been reduced by 50% in the past 30 years, through improvements in steel making technologies, further improvements are necessary to allow the industry to remain competitive. Heating and reheating steel is responsible for most energy consumption in the steel supply chain. Therefore the introduction of new processing routes to minimise or eliminate reheating stages will have a dramatic effect on energy use, and, if this is coupled with reduced hot deformation requirements by casting to near net shape, further energy reductions can be realised. This project is concerned with establishing laboratory facilities for simulating the microstructures produced in steels during belt casting, or similar near net shape casting technologies. Belt casting has high productivity and therefore could be installed in large integrated steel works, such as those in the UK where conventional continuous casting to large sections is currently used. The introduction of this new technology would reduce energy consumption by > 3 GJ/tonne steel produced (based on savings of approximately 2 GJ/tonne from reduced hot rolling and approximately 1.25 GJ/tonne from near net shape casting). Reductions in CO2 emissions, due to the reduced energy use, is also significant; considering that 12 million metric tonnes of steel were produced in the UK in 2013, this project could result in a reduction in UK CO2 emissions of >0.4%. The major success criteria from this feasibility study will be to establish experimental simulation techniques that can accurately reproduce the solidification structures (micro-segregation levels, grain structure, surface characteristics) of belt cast material, where cooling rates of approximately 60 C/s can occur. This will be achieved using laboratory facilities for solidification studies (a Gleeble 3500 and a confocal scanning laser microscope) already present at the universities of Warwick and Birmingham, with additional equipment being acquired at Warwick (Gleeble HDS-V40) to allow uni-directional cooling during solidification and direct feed of the hot steel into deformation. This latter capability will generate a unique facility in the UK and allow further research to optimise processing conditions and steel chemistries to generate enhanced properties in advanced high strength steels (AHSS). Further success will be demonstrated by initial trials to determine casting process windows (cooling rates and composition limits) for producing an AHSS grade.