Sustainable metallurgy: current activities and potential collaborations
Sustainable metallurgy is one of the key issues for the further development of the manufacturing of engineering materials, which attracts the attention significantly in a recent decade. The research activities can refer to either the higher extraction ratio of valuable elements through recycling from metallurgical wastes, implementing the environmental-friendly solutions along the value chain including CO2-reduced production. Besides, it also relates to the efficient alloy design upfront more recycling-oriented alloy systems. In this talk, Dr. Mu attempts to provide a short overview of the research activities on sustainable metallurgy he has performed in the past years. He will start from the extraction and recovery of the valuable elements from converter steelmaking slag using hydrometallurgical method, and pyrolysis of different waste materials e.g. peat moss using pyrometallurgical method. Subsequently, he will move to introduce the broad process metallurgy topics regarding ultra-clean steel production by controlling motion behaviors of impurity particles (non-metallic inclusions), high entropy alloys preparation utilizing the low price ferroalloys, design and manufacturing the new grade duplex stainless steels with a longer service life working at intermediate temperature conditions. Some on-going work will also be briefly mentioned.