Concerns for climate change and declining oil reserves lead to a shift of transportationsystems in many industrial countries. However, alternative drive concepts contain to someextent critical raw materials. Since the availability of certain raw materials could bedecisive for the success of emerging technologies, concerns are growing about thepotential limitation of resources. This brought about a growing attention to the subjectsof criticality and resource security of raw materials by science, policy and industry.Four of the resulting surveys are described in terms of their framing of criticality,their indicators for evaluating criticality, and their rankings of potentially criticalraw materials. Critical raw materials are used in alternative drive concepts because oftheir specific properties. The focus of our work lies on batteries for electric vehicleswith special attention to lithium-ion batteries being one of the most promising candidatesfor energy storage there. Lithium-ion batteries use as major cathode materials lithium,manganese and cobalt, all of which are potential critical. A material flow model of theglobal manganese cycle is developed. It could be identified that there is a lack ofrelevant data for processes and flows. The lack of data impedes a comprehensive view andtherefore no final conclusions could be drawn, which advice the need for further research.Using manganese as an example, it could be illustrated how material flow analysis cancontribute to compiling relevant preparatory work that can subsequently serve as a basisfor a prospective support of a criticality evaluation and to inform stakeholders andpolicy makers about the effectiveness of various interventions to reduce the risk or theeffects of supply chain disruptions.

What environmental constraints will materials have to face in the future? Can currentmeasurement tools like LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) support the choices of material and adaptto these constraints to pave the way to a sustainable world? Are there some alternative orcomplementary approaches to enhance the quality of information for decision makers? Theaim of this article is to provide answers to these three questions. The society oftomorrow, in the second half of the 21st century, will be a society where the circulareconomy will play a more important role and thus will help reduce materials waste. This isa critical aspect of sustainability. To get there, the decisions have to be enlightenedand fair, because the decisions (or non-decisions) made today shape the world that futuregenerations will have to manage. Furthermore, Lord Kelvin used to say: “what you can’tmeasure, you can’t improve”. Therefore, these decisions have to be supported bymeasurement tools that will properly capture the stakes of reuse and recycling at the endof life of products. Today, LCA is the common tool used to address this matter. However,the present article has shown that LCA cannot incorporate the whole complexity ofsustainability. LCA is good at considering micro-scale issues, comparing one solution withanother, in a static approach. How can it give right directions to decision makers inorder to support the vision of a circular economy? The application of different standardsshowed that it is not easy at all and that recycling product at their end of life are notrewarded equally and sometimes not promoted at all. Therefore rebound effects leading tocontradictory decisions may occur. LCA alone is not enough to make enlightened decisions.It should be complemented by other methods. This was proposed in the last part. Based onthe IPAT equation, this approach tries to capture different aspects that are not addressedproperly by LCA, due to the fact that the functional unit is too restrictive, that thetime dimension and prospective approach should be more integrated, and that it shouldenlarge the scale of the analysis to the macro-economy and the socio-economy. It shouldalso recognize that the efforts have to be shared by different players including materialindustry and manufacturers, policy makers and society in general. As a general conclusion,we are convinced that tomorrow’s society will recognize the value of materials that arerecyclable and reusable, like steel has been for many decades. But there is still a clearneed to addressing, in research and development, the improvement of the metrics, combiningsocial, environmental and economic assessment, so that the sustainability value ofmaterials is properly measured. These are the objectives of the Sovamat Initiative and theSAM conferences.

The action of ArcelorMittal Maizières in the domain ofphysical chemistry of metallurgical slags and liquid steel hasalways been sustained. In particular, this activity gave birthto several models among which the cell model that describesthe properties of metallurgical slags (and of liquid oxideinclusions) has a special place. This model, along with otherspecific models describing the metallic phases, has beenincluded in a home-built equilibrium calculation code CEQCSI(Chemical EQuilibrium Calculations for the Steel Industry)to allow easy calculations by non specialist users. Severalapplications to steel elaboration will be presented. An insightinto the development of new models such as the GeneralizedCentral Atom model is also given. The application domainof this latter model is high alloyed and segregated steelgrades and the same formalism is also used to improve theperformance of the cell model for slags.

The forthcoming European legislation on cars and environment protection has an impact on the materials used for the production of cars. Weight reduction to limit the emission of green house effect gases is possible using new designs with recently developed high strength steels. Examples are described for the body in white and for hang-on panels. Specific steel products provide increased energy absorption capacity and stiffness, and the present coating technologies provide sheets with the required corrosion resistance. Methods are also developed to produce good quality scrap from the vehicles at their life end; they lead to a high degree of material recycling and to a reduction of waste.

Oxygen consumption in the EAF continues to increase, partly due to the development of various technologies based on supersonic lancing. This paper discusses the characteristics of supersonic jets and their industrial implementation. Based on fluid mechanics, numeric modelling and laboratory measurements, physical parameters which can act on the quality of the jet are reviewed.Alarc Jet supersonic injection technology has been designed to provide, in addition to high-standard burners and postcombustion tools, the best global efficiency of oxygen in the EAF. Application to the 160-t furnace of SAM Neuves-Maisons is described.

Hot tearing close to the solidus temperature occurs in continuouscasting of steels. Four hot tearing criteria from the literature are reviewedand assessed against laboratory tests. Based on a critical straincriterion, an accumulated strain approach is introduced and criticalvalues are determined by laboratory experiments.

The automotive is a sector where energy consumption during theuse phase prevails over the production and the end-of-life phase.Therefore, a lot of research and innovations have aimed atreplacing classical steel parts by lighter materials like light alloysand polymer composites. While composites are very attractivefor the use phase of cars, their introduction suffers from the limitedend-of-life options for composite structures. Due to the restrictionsimposed by the European ELV directive, the use of non-recyclablecomposite components in car manufacturing is not obvious.
An extensive life cycle analysis for a reference car design wasconducted to study the effects of replacement of conventionalsteel structures by lightweight carbon fibre composite alternatives.The study also takes second order effects in the design of the carinto account, such as the required motor power. The obtainedresults show the trend towards more intensive use of carbonfibrecomposites in car design desires some nuancing, and theopportunities and threats are identified.

Ecosystem goods and services (EGSs) are of crucial importance for the economic and socialdevelopment of human communities. The well-established life cycle assessment (LCA) methodis facing a number of challenging improvements to define new Characterization factors(CFs) for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of EGSs. Very recently, extensive workconducted under the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle initiative has been completed with the goal ofproviding new LCIA methods and spatially differentiated mid-point CFs for land use andland use change impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, the implementedmodels do not enable one to assess the actual damage to ecosystem functionality, and thusthe relationship among EGSs and related areas of protection (e.g. AoP of “NaturalResources”) remains undefined. This paper aims at investigating the potentialcharacterization ability of the Emergy method for LCIA of EGSs. The goal is to use theextensive libraries of Unit Emergy Values (UEVs) of primary services and resources as CFsfor LCIA to evaluate the physical contribution of EGSs in supporting life cycle processes.Having its roots in thermodynamics and systems ecology, Emergy can appraise a larger andmore diversified (than LCA) number of EGSs through a common physical denominator, i.e. thesolar emjoule or seJ, which measures the solar energy embodied in natural products. Emergythus has a typical Nature-oriented perspective, accounting for the available energy thatis used up by the natural cycles, directly and indirectly, to generate biotic and abioticresources. A library of selected UEVs (more than 100) for biophysical EGS valuation hasbeen framed including values collected from the Emergy literature and formulated on thelatest planetary baseline (i.e. 15.2E + 24 seJ/yr). Advantages and limitations for futureapplication of these values toward an LCIA mid-point impact characterization of Emergy arediscussed. UEVs may represent mid-point LCIA factors for ecological contribution analysis,enabling one to account for the memory of energy previously required to produce EGSs,which can be used as a proxy to assess the future environmental work necessary toregenerate the used EGSs. However, the added value of Emergy for LCA is still debated,mainly because of the low accuracy and unclear meaning of the UEVs in relation to theavailability of resources. Therefore, Emergy can be conceived as a suitable physicalmeasure complementary to the economic valuations and current “user-side” tools applied inLCA.

Three typical cokes were used for experiments in order to clarify the relationship between coke properties and solution loss behavior and its influence on the post-reaction strength of coke. Isothermal reactions between coke and CO2 at 1050–1300 °C were stopped at a weight loss of 25%. The post-reaction strength of coke was tested by an I-Type tumbler. Coke chemical reactivity and pore structure were tested to analyze the coke properties. The results show that the reaction temperature caused the most serious degradation to three cokes that were different due to their different properties. If two kinds of coke have similar chemical reactivity, the one with the less developed pore structure has a lower temperature, causing the most serious degradation. If two kinds of coke have similar pore structure, the one with the higher chemical reactivity has a lower temperature, causing the most serious degradation. This knowledge contributes to a reference for evaluating the capability of coke strength for resisting solution loss.

In this paper, based on the practice of manganese production in China, a preliminary life cycle assessment (LCA) of the electrolytic manganese industry is provided, and an analysis of its environmental impact is carried out. A comparison is made between China and South Africa. By comparison, it can be seen that the environmental impact of the manganese production industry in China is more serious. New process technology can be expected to save energy and clean up production.

For years, the iron and steel industry has been in search of new processes for an efficient production of virgin steel as well as for the recycling of its by-products, especially for those containing zinc. Considering these objectives, Paul Wurth S.A., in cooperation with ProfilARBED, has developed a process using the multiple-hearth furnace and coal fines as the reductant and main energy source. A trial plant with a capacity of 2 t/h was built and has been operated for more than one year at the ProfilARBED Belval site. This paper reports on the trial campaigns, which have given most promising results.

Innovative blast furnace operations with top gas recycling after CO2 scrubbing were numerically examined. The fully kinetic mathematical model was applied to the operations with recycled gas injections into the tuyere and stack parts of the furnace, and the top gas recycling combined with waste plastics injection. The simulation results showed that the top gas recycling decreased the reducing agent rate and increased the productivity.

Optimization of deoxidizer sequencing, such as Al and Ti, isan important topic which can provide improvement in termsof inclusion composition and process stability. Nevertheless,modeling inclusion nucleation and growth in a ladle is still achallenge, since different complex mechanisms are involved.The paper describes key steps which involve an importantmodeling investigation. The first step deals with deoxidizer meltingin a turbulent steel bath. The second is devoted to nucleationand growth of inclusions: thermodynamics criteria for inclusionprecipitation and turbulent agglomeration of clusters should besimultaneously considered.

After a short historical review, this paper recalls the successive steps of the life prediction of single crystal turbine blades, paying attention to a proper modelling of the material, to the mechanical aspects in the blades, and to the boundary conditions. The code built around the FE solver ZéBuLoN is now able to predict crack initiation by post-processing of the 3D elasto-viscoplastic computations.

The technology of electrochemical energy storage (EES) is supposed to play a key role inthe near future for mobility systems characterized by electric vehicles as well as forstationary applications providing energy supply as they represent the interface betweentransport and energy networks. The performance of EES systems is closely linked to theapplied battery materials which contain metals often considered critical. For determiningcriticality of metals different approaches have been used which however evaluate suchmaterials for the economy as a whole. What has been missing up till now is the examinationof critical raw materials for individual technologies.Therefore it is intended to developa technology specific criticality indicator for battery materials.The focus of this paperis developing a method to indicate the significance of raw materials for electrochemicalactive materials used by lithium-ion batteries (LIB) which are currently very promisingEES for mobile and stationary applications. In order to implement this at first thefollowing three aspects were analyzed and put in relation to each other: importance ofelectrode materials, amount of metal in the active material and exploitable metalreserves. The combination of these factors resulted in a relevance index (RI) which allowsdetermining the relevance of raw materials in different types of LIBs. Based on this indexthe development of a technology specific criticality indicator has to integrate furtheraspects being the focus of future work.

Recently, the issue of sustainable resource management has been increasingly recognized.Economic growth of human activity is associated with a rapid rise in the use of resourcesin our economy, and society has a potential environmental impact. The UNEP InternationalResource Panel (IRP) pointed out the importance of decoupling resource use and negativeenvironmental impacts from economic activity (UNEP IRP 2011). In order tooptimize the material cycles and increase resource efficiency, material flow analysis(MFA) is a powerful tool to understand the resource consumption and material cycle in thenational economy. In this study, we present the results of global material flow analysisof nickel, which is one of the important resources for reducing energy use andCO2 emission inour society, and discuss the importance and possibility of controlling its resourcelogistics. This study also introduces the challenge of identifying the land-use changes innickel mining sites by a remote-sensing technique, and knowledge to increase the resourceefficiency in metal recycling based on the metallurgical thermodynamic approach. Theresults indicated the importance of recovery of nickel in recycling policies forend-of-life (EoL) vehicles and constructions. Improvement in EoL sorting technologies andimplementation of designs for recycling/disassembly at the manufacturing phase are needed.Possible solutions include development of sorting processes for steel scrap andintroduction of easier methods for identifying the composition of secondary resources.Recovery of steel scrap with a high alloy content will reduce primary inputs of alloyingelements and contribute to more efficient resource use.

Ancient artisans conferred special colourings to their metal artefacts by particular techniques, which went lost in later centuries. They were also able to give to copper based alloys the appearance of precious metals. The author presents ancient examples of coloured metals and alloys, identified by scientific methods and discusses the problem of recognizing various surface treatments on archaeological objects.

Research conducted on biomass for Ulcos (“Ultra-Low CO2 Steelmaking” European Integrated Project)has progressively focused on charcoal supply fromtropical eucalyptus plantations. The sustainability of suchplantations is being investigated from the viewpoint oftheir carbon, water and nutrient budgets: they must allbe neutral or positive. Field research is producing resultsat the tree or stand level in several sites of Congo andBrazil, while a spatial model is developed to identifythe conditions of biomass neutrality at the scale of theforest ecosystem. The productivity of biomass has beenanalyzed through the description of practices along theAbstracts of technical articlesvarious supply-schemes that competitively feed the steelindustry in Brazil and the identification of bottlenecks forfurther expansion.

A review of the degassing process, including basicprinciples, is done followed by the assessment of castabilityissues. Steelmaking practices that could lead to potentialplugging in the submerged entry nozzles at the casters areoutlined. The steel cleanliness is discussed for a select steelgrade including a brief review of inclusion characterization.

The direct relationship between the total oxygen content of the steelor the slag composition and the rate of surface defects on the finalproducts has been clearly established by many previous studies.The paper describes the appropriate process parameters to preventthe re-oxidation of the molten steel and clogging of the submergedentry nozzles, two essential factors to meet the product cleannessrequirements: quantification of re-oxidation, control of re-oxidationby slags, air or refractories, control of Ar injection, mechanisms andways to reduce CC nozzle clogging.