Mapping a cleaner future for non-ferrous and light metals
The IOM3 Non-Ferrous and Light Metals Group Leadership Team has produced a roadmap to take the industry forward.
The IOM3 Non Ferrous Light Metals (NFLM) Group Leadership Team is seeing its vision of 'mapping a cleaner future for non-ferrous and light metals' at last coming to fruition after a year’s worth of hard work.
The aim was to uncover those aspects of our economic and manufacturing environments in the UK – both in industry and academia – that need addressing, so that the metals can play a pivotal part in the circular economy and industrial landscape going forward.
We have constructed a roadmap for the circular production and use of non-ferrous light metals, combining all the information gathered from expert attendees at a series of webinars followed by a face-to-face workshop. This article serves to promulgate the summary roadmap and points to the more detailed outputs that are available via the NFLM Group webpage.
On the road
The first of three taster webinars titled ‘Mapping a Cleaner Future for Non-Ferrous and Light Metals’ was held on 16 November 2022 to raise interest in the project. The webinar presented the various roadmaps already in existence for related topics and their construction to inspire discussion.
Dr Alessio Franconi from the Royal College of Art discussed visions of a circular economy in the UK in 2050 and his wish to create a roadmap as to how to get there.
Dr Anne Velenturf, from the University of Leeds, UK, and Technical Programme Manager for the Transforming Foundation Industries Research and Innovation Hub (TransFIRe), suggested that industries could make better use of by-products, minimise energy and materials in manufacture, and forge better relationships with surrounding communities.
The final speaker was NFLM Leadership Team member Professor Martin Jackson AIMMM from the Henry Royce Institute.
The webinar set the scene for a ‘live’ event on 26 April 2023, held at Coventry University, UK.
Chaco Van der Sijp, Innovation Lead at Innovate UK, discussed the challenges in the food-energy-water-climate stress nexus and its application in manufacturing, transport, digital transformation and the energy transition.
Insights from the Flyzero roadmap for zero-carbon emission technologies in aviation were then shared by Dr Matthew Bailey of the UK’s Aerospace Technology Institute.
Dr Stephen Hall, Managing Director at Advanced Alloy Services Ltd, elaborated on the ‘Development of superalloys for the jet engine’. He used the example of UK development of the jet engine to illustrate how a lack of innovation adoption, funding and future visions can stultify technological development. An outline for a solution, encompassing reuse and new quality standards for critical minerals (specifically for titanium, cobalt, chromium and rare earths) was proposed, all within the guise of policy revision and a supportive regulatory environment.
The Circular Economy Network in Transportation Systems (CENTS) roadmap was also discussed to spark ideas, presented by Dr Sumit Hazra, Project Engineer at the University of Warwick, UK.
On the topic of hydrogen production, Paul Winstanley at Thorntec shared his thoughts, while Dr Mark Mistry, Senior Public Policy Manager at the Nickel Institute, revealed how nickel is employed within most of the technologies required for the energy transition – hydroelectric power, wind, solar power and battery technologies.
Finally, Dr Masoumeh Faraji MIMMM, from Coventry University, gave a presentation on the lifecycle analysis of additive manufacturing for a titanium-based engineering component.
The attendees were then divided into groups to consider gaps in the existing roadmaps and salient content that was missing. These outputs have been channelled into a summary roadmap for the non-ferrous light metals sector.
Mapped out
The top-level roadmap is shown below. This gathers and summarises detail from four roadmaps concerned with the different challenges discussed at the workshop. Regulations, policy, fines, financial incentives and funding appear consistently as themes running across all the roadmaps.
We spent a great deal of time examining key roadmaps that would impact this sector. These were Innovate UK’s Materials and Manufacturing Vision 2050, the Aerospace Technology Institute’s Destination Zero The Technology Journey to 2050, and the Advanced Propulsion Centre and Automotive Council UK’s Lightweight Vehicle and Powertrain Structures Roadmap 2020. We extracted what was most relevant to our roadmap and these have been appropriately referenced.
The top-level roadmap pictured below has several columns and ‘swim lanes’. Each of the swim lanes represent one of the six challenges listed on the far left. At the far right, we have captured Innovate UK’s Materials and Manufacturing Vision 2050 statements. The three columns represent the objectives that need to be achieved imminently (left-hand side), to those that need to be achieved by 2030 (middle) and lastly by 2040 (right-hand side).
Ideally, those ideas within the roadmap will be exploited with innovative thought to enable the UK to become a centre of best practice for the NFLM lifecycle and move towards a zero-carbon sector.
View live version of NFLM Cleaner Future Roadmap
The four more detailed roadmaps that feed into this are available on the NFLM Group page. These roadmaps are considered ‘live’ documents, and therefore should you have thoughts or suggestions, contact the Group Chair Cheryll Pitt on [email protected].
View detailed NFLM roadmaps on NFLM Group page
The authors would like to thank the IOM3 Events Team, who helped every step of the way with our event – publicising, booking attendees and liaising with the IOM3 Sponsorship Team to arrange funding from our sponsors at the Circular Economy Network in Transportation Systems (CENTS), and lastly assisting with the production of the event on the day.
See also Materials World articles:
TransFIRe
CENTS roadmap
Dr Faraji’s piece on updates from titanium welding.
