70th Hatfield Memorial Lecture
Event details
Description
Designing sustainable metals for a low carbon future
Synopsis
The manufacturing and processing of metals to form components is one of the largest industrial sectors and accounts for 46% of all manufactured value, with an economic value to the European Economic Area of €1.3 trillion annually. Metals production consumes about 5% of global energy use and is responsible for an annual CO2 emission of over 2Gton. An obvious target in metal alloy development must be to significantly reduce this environmental impact. In addition, we face major future challenges as key elements that will be increasingly in short supply with the current price volatility getting much worse ("the ticking time bomb"). In addition to factors such as rarity, the geographical location of ores and local political uncertainty can severely limit supply. Rare earth elements are a prime example of this (for example, they are the key component of magnets and central to the performance of magnesium alloys).
The availability and sustainability of a large group of metallic elements are clearly critical in delivering new low-carbon energy (fusion reactors, wind turbines, the hydrogen economy, etc), transport (batteries, electric vehicles), construction and so on. Addressing resource efficiency in metals production and use requires that new metal alloys be developed specifically to reduce reliance on strategic and scarce elements, for recycling and for disruptive manufacturing technologies that minimise waste.
In this lecture I will address the major challenges facing UK metals manufacturing. The talk will take examples of how, by taking resource efficiency as a starting point, metal alloys can be designed to give improved properties, but less reliance on critical elements. Specific case studies will come from designing lean steels for ultra-high strength to give weight saving technologies in automotive, the challenges in steel quality in switching from BOS steel to EAF steel making, designing steel for Fusion Power Reactors, removing Rare Earth elements from wrought magnesium alloys and designing steels for the hydrogen economy.
Biography
Professor Mark Rainforth took a first class BMet degree from the Department of Metallurgy in Sheffield in 1984. He then continued his career in industry, firstly at British Steel and later at TI Research Hinxton Hall, before taking a PhD in the School of Materials in Leeds in 1990, moving as an academic to the Department of Materials in Sheffield in 1989. He was promoted to a Personal Chair in 2000, was Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering between 2011-15 and was appointed the POSCO Professor of Iron and Steel in 2021.
A past President of the Royal Microscopical Society, he is recognised for his work on the processing and characterisation of metal alloys, with emphasis on a resource efficient approach to designing metal alloys for higher performance. He has worked extensively in steels, titanium, magnesium, cobalt and aluminium alloys.
Professor Rainforth was Director of the £44m Sheffield hub of the Henry Royce Institute, leading the design and construction of two new buildings (Royce Discovery Building and Royce Translational Centre) complete with a world leading equipment base.
He has directed two major industry facing institutes, namely, the £7m Institute for Microstructural and Mechanical Process Engineering (IMMPETUS) and the £10m Mercury Centre for Innovative Materials and Manufacturing. He led the £3m EPSRC grant “Designing Alloys for Resource Efficiency” (DARE) and co-investigator on the EPSRC Programme Grants £5m “Hydrogen in Metals (HEmS)” and the £5m “Tribology Enigma”. He is currently Sheffield PI on the EPSRC Future Steel Manufacturing Hub, SUSTAIN (£10.6m).
He has published over 400 ISI journal papers, publishing extensively in the top journals, including Nature, Science, Science Advances, Acta Materialia, Scripta Materialia, Scientific Reports and Proc Royal Soc (attracting over 1000 citations per year), one textbook and numerous invited presentations at leading international conferences around the globe.
Professor Rainforth was elected a Fellow Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2016. He is the winner of the Verulam Medal and Prize, the Rosenhain Medal and the Pfeil Prize of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and a winner of the Thomas Stephens Prize and the Bronze Medal of the Tribology Group of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.