Spring meeting April 29th – A successful online webinar
News from 2020
April 29th SFI Metal Production organized the yearly Spring Meeting. Due to the extraordinary coronavirus situation we were not able to have a physical meeting this time. The traditional two-day spring meeting were replaced by an all-day online webinar. A positive effect was that the online solution enabled more participants from the industry and research institutions outside Trondheim to join the meeting.
to the webinar.
Ketil Rye, Process Technology Manager at Alcoa, congratulated the centre on a very well-organized agenda and a professional performance in the SFI Spring Webinar: “Alcoa had more than 15 direct participant and even more clustered around their computers to watch the latest news from the activities in Trondheim. Making the spring meeting as a webinar enabled a very good dissemination of results in spite of the present travel restrictions. Actually, in many respects the webinar format enabled a much better result dissemination than the traditional face-to-face meetings, as we could now invite participants throughout our world-wide company.” Another upside was the low cost of participation, as no time was spent in travel and the net time consumed was focused on the hours the webinar was open.
Use of sustainable biomass in Norway
Gisle L. Johansen from Borregaard opened the meeting with an interesting talk on Availability of biomass for reductant production in Norway. Johansen is the Head of the Expert team in Process21- "Biobased Process Industry" where the goal is to increase the value creation and reduce GHG emissions in the Norwegian process industry based on the use of sustainable biomass. For the SFI partners, the Silicon and Ferrosilicon producers are using some biocarbon in their production, appr. 530 000 fm3 in 2019. In Norway, 11 mill fm3 of wood was logged in 2019 of which 4 mill fm3 is exported to Finland and Sweden. The need biomass (bioethanol and biocarbon) in the process industry is estimated to 8 mill fm3. So, the competition for biomass in Norway will be high!
SINTEF in-kind acitivity in the center
Johansen’s talk was followed by presentations on SINTEF in-kind activity in the center – 1) SlagStruc: A new modelling Framework for slag microstructure and properties and 2) Improved yield in metal production using controlled wetting ‐ Case: FeMn metal production. Both topics are highly relevant for the work in the Centre in RD2 Primary Metal Production.
Presentations of major achievements and results in SFI Metal Production
After lunch the five research domains presented major achievements and results. The Centre activities cover the value chain from raw materials, primary metal production, recycling and emissions.
The presentations covered examples from the value chain from RD1) modelling - Pragmatic hybrid modelling and modelling of the electrical conditions in a SAF -furnaces from the ElMet projects, RD2) raw materials - electrical conductivity in charge materials and briquettes. RD3) Better utilisation of materials in the production of Aluminium - recovery of surplus bath and processing of SPL. RD4) Emissions focused on sensors for monitoring dust emissions in the industry, and modelling of scaling in off-gas systems. The Webinar was closing with a presentation on the topic of the "Beginning and the End of the Aluminium Value Chain" – and the need for closed loop in the production and use of aluminium.
Centre manager Aud Wærnes closed the meeting and concluded that we are happy to have online solutions in times of major restrictions due to the corona pandemic. We see that there are advantages when participants can follow the talks from their (home) offices. We will evaluate the webinar together with the participants, and we feel confident that webinars can be a very good supplement to future meetings for the Centre.