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PRODUCT INNOVATIONS OF KEY
ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE FOR THE
STEEL INDUSTRY
JEAN-PIERRE BIRAT, IF STEELMAN
OECD, Steel Committee, 30/11-1/12 2015, Paris
Introduction
Steel is special because it has been part of the technological
epistemes of mankind for several thousand years!
it is unusual to speak of innovation when dealing with long
time, historical time & even prehistorical time! The time of
business, of economics, of politics is so much shorter! The
usual categories stemming from marketing do not apply.
Steel is both a Cumulative Technology, a Key Enabling
Technology and, actually, embedded in the long time and the
slow time, a Socio-Economic Invariant.
there are many ways to talk about steel, about change and
innovation in particular, and not all the stories told are diverse
and not always coherent: I will therefore focus on a series of
narratives about steel.
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Content
the historical narrative
the innovation drivers narrative
the metallurgical narrative
the materials science & nanotechnology narrative
the value chain narrative
the sustainability narrative & environmental metallurgy
the 3rd industrial revolution narrative
Conclusions
The historical narrative
Air, iron & water, by Robert Delaunay
or the slow invention of innovation
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Historical narrative
Puddling furnace
Bloomery
Finery Blast Furnace
Bessemer pneumatic steelmaking
Open Hearth steelmaking EAF
Recent development of production
technologies
initially, this has led to the major transformation of the steel mill, after
the WWII, with a series of throuput-coherent production steps
operating seeminglessly & more or less continuously
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The innovation drivers narrative
Air, iron & water, by Robert Delaunay
Historical depth of 100 years
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The metallurgical narrative
Air, iron & water, by Robert Delaunay
A simple image of metallurgy
Equilibrium
diagrams Composition, macrostructure
(segregation)
Steelmaking & CC Kinetics
Cooling, heat treatment, thermomechanical Microstructure, user's properties
Reheating furnace, hot rolling, cold rolling, cold forming, heat treatment
Precipitates, inclusions,
3rd phases Cleanliness, hardening, aging
Reheating, rolling, forming,
heat treatments
Process dispersions Consistency/reproducibility
of μ-structures & properties
Quality & process management & control Theory
Metallurgy,
materials science,
solid state physics,
Coatings Corrosion resistance,
life-in-use
Coating lines
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Metallurgical narrative (1 of 3)
Steel outside of the steel sector, including pig iron & superalloys: powder metallurgy
foundry & die casting
tube & pipe production
single crystal production
Precision & injection molding
Seamless tube production
Centrifugal casting of pipes
niche technologies: mechanical alloying
thixo-, rheocasting, thixoforming
spray casting
Production of metallic foam
Metallurgical narrative (2 of 2)
Emerging technologies:
superplasticity
architectured materials
nanomaterials and "nanosteel"
additive manufacturing
Innovation in steel metallurgy:
the theoretical concepts probably fully developed at a general level
however, fine-tuning of new grades for specific applications, for new processes (e.g. HSS on a thin slab caster) or because of tension on raw materials, very demanding in terms of R&D in order to produce "global grades" in particular
Innovation often driven by customer engineering, see "value-chain narrative"
Many more examples in the written paper…
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The Materials Science
Air, iron & water, by Robert Delaunay
& Nanotechnology narrative
The Materials Science narrative
Metallurgy -> Materials Science (not completely different!)
extension of metallurgy beyond metals (ceramics, composites, polymers, "soft" materials, etc.)
"new materials": amorphous materials, small-grained material (cf. NanoSteel)
rapid solidification, unidirectional solidification, single-crystal growth
thermomechanical treatment & controlled rolling
composite materials (eutectic, metal matrix,
materials association, joining of materials, ODS materials
architectured materials, quasi-crystals, fullerenes, graphene, stanene
a rhetoric of promises: fantastic new properties, large market share, displacement of older materials
advanced materials (KETs): EC techno-policy language
nanotechnology
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The value-chain narrative
Air, iron & water, by Robert Delaunay
Value chain narrative
absolute music vs. program music, steel vs. steel
solutions…
a user works with the steel producer to develop a grade,
complete with primary and secondary processing steps.
Each part thus requires a specific new material, as far as
sophisticated applications are concerned (car).
the target is a set of microstructure and properties
obtained through a transverse holistic modeling of
processing & manufacturing, to custom design a "steel
solution"
Steel producers have resident engineers at OEM's design
departments to help design new car models, part by part
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Construction
main drivers: economics and regulation Construction Products Regulation (CPR) (EU) No 305/2011
Mechanical Resistance and Stability
Safety in case of Fire
Hygiene, Health and the Environment
Safety in Use
Protection against Noise
Energy Economy and Heat Retention: Nearly Zero Energy Buildings
new to the CPR: requirement on sustainability, use of natural resources
tension between innovative and robust products (Eurocodes): “Super Sophisticated Materials” in many cases cannot compete with “Robust Tolerant Systems”.
Examples of new construction-
solutions
HISTAR® Jumbo beams (AM)
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Packaging: beverage cans
Weight time evolution
20/3/2015
2013-
2015
< 20 g
0.22 0.19 0.35
Initial gauge (in mm)
0.33 0.28 0.29 0.30 0.27
2007
22
0.21
g/can 38 _
36 _
34 _
32 _
30 _
28 _
26 _
24 _
22 _
20 _
18 _
20 g for a 33 cl can,
with a wall thicknesss < 80 μm
& an axial pressure resistance of 100 kg
Automotive steels (1 of 2)
20
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Automotive steels (2 of 2)
The energy market
steel is at the core of the energy system
the steel intensity of renewable energy generation is higher than in conventional power plants
specific product, like PV cell-covered steel sheets
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
hardcoal
lignite gas CC nuclearPWR
WoodCHP
PV poly5 kW
Wind1500kw
(5.5)
Wind1500kw
(4.5)
Hydro3,1 Mw
Fe (kg/GWhel)
Fe (kg/GWhel)
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The sustainability narrative
Air, iron & water, by Robert Delaunay
Sustainability metallurgy
environnemental & societal issues are externalities in neo-classical economics – a bit less so in business (CSR)
main issues: corrosion (not an externality)
resources & raw materials (scarcity? tension on prices), circular economy
energy use and exergy destruction: energy savings (10%), breakthrough process technologies (25%) – energy transition
emissions to air, sol and water
greenhouse gas emissions (2tCO2/tsteel)
social & environmental value of steel (cf. SOVAMAT initiative & SAM conferences): LCA, SAT, MFA, etc.
ecodesign (use less optimzed elements)
SAM-10, Rome, 9-10 May 2015
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Sustainability metallurgy
environnemental & societal issues are externalities in neo-classical economics – a bit less so in business (CSR)
main issues: corrosion (not an externality)
resources & raw materials (scarcity? tension on prices), circular economy
energy use and exergy destruction: energy savings (10%), breakthrough process technologies (25%) – energy transition
emissions to air, sol and water
greenhouse gas emissions (2tCO2/tsteel)
social & environmental value of steel (cf. SOVAMAT initiative & SAM conferences): LCA, SAT, MFA, etc.
ecodesign (use less optimized elements, use 2 less for 2 as long)
SAM-10, Rome, 9-10 May 2015
Sustainability metallurgy
environnemental & societal issues are externalities in neo-classical economics – a bit less so in business (CSR)
main issues: corrosion (not an externality)
resources & raw materials (scarcity? tension on prices), circular economy
energy use and exergy destruction: energy savings (10%), breakthrough process technologies (25%) – energy transition
emissions to air, sol and water
greenhouse gas emissions (2tCO2/tsteel)
social & environmental value of steel (cf. SOVAMAT initiative & SAM conferences): LCA, SAT, MFA, etc.
ecodesign (use less optimzed elements)
SAM-10, Rome, 9-10 May 2015
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Steel is green (LCA results)
28
30 000
30 500
31 000
31 500
32 000
32 500
33 000
Reference AHSS Aluminium
Life
cyc
le g
reen
hous
e ga
s em
issi
ons
(kgC
O2e
q)
Compact class vehicle
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The 3rd Industrial Revolution
narrative
Air, iron & water, by Robert Delaunay
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The 3rd industrial revolution
narrative
IoT, Web of Things,
semantic web, ambient
intelligence, wearable
computing, I2M, Industrie
4.0, IoS, cloud computing,
IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, big data,
etc. (ICT development)
Additive manufacturing, 3D-
printing
Robots
AI (cf. a recent real-time
Delphi survey of the
Millennium Project) "
the Zero Marginal Cost
Society
"this will constitute the new
Kondratieff cycle, shape the
future technological
episteme and relaunch
growth in a big way"
The 3rd industrial revolution
narrative
What consequences for steel?
the new generation of ICT (IoT, Big Data, robots, IA, etc.) technology will come and change the way we work, like it has done over the last 20-30 years…. but some of it has been here for a while!!
the major uncertainty is whether this will increase labor productivity (i.e. will it really rightfully claim the status of an industrial revolution???)
3-D printing is deeply questioning an entrenched feature of steel mills, mass production. Is lower scale, more local production possible in a significant manner (beyond already existing examples) that would move out of niche applications?
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Conclusions
Air, iron & water, by Robert Delaunay
Conclusions
steel has been a kind of invariant in the technological
epistemes continuously following up on each other since
the Iron Age
this will continue for many years to come (=forever)
geostrategic "fears" relative to the "finite earth" and the
scarcity of raw materials do not apply to steel (iron ore &
coal). Moreover, steel will be one of the most virtuous
players in the circular economy!
will steel continue to evolve – as it did over the last 3000
years - or has it reached some kind of stasis?
it is a matter of faith…
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Conclusions
but steel's intrinsic properties (strong, ductile, available= cheap) are
such that it will continue to accommodate demands of the future societal
context and continue to create what amounts to new steels over and
over again…
the major issue is who will be in the driver's seat of innovation, in the
years to come? the historical steel producers (companies and world
regions, like NAFTA, EU, Japan, Korea), institutions like the EC (H2020)
and national institutions, or emerging economies (China, Brazil, etc.)?
… or new core issues, which were forgotten for a while, during the
explosion of the world economy, in the second half of the 20th century?
…and what about the threats like climate change and the opportunities
like population growth - until 10 billion people or about?
Conclusions – steel innovation
Innovation often understood as product innovation, as
narrowly defined by marketing "science"
the S-curve is an old-fashioned and limited
approach, related to excessive consumption
and to planned obsolescence – thus to
un-sustainable consumption
the development of metals and materials
follows a different path:
at the beginning, there is a cumulative technology
then a deep & recent interaction to deliver "material solutions", which are
close in concept to product-services. These do follow an S-curve.
thus materials, metals and steel remain part of a continuing chain of
technological epistemes and are thus a kind of invariant in our present
"civilization"
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Merci for your attention!
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Air, iron & water, by Robert Delaunay
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