introduction - oecd · puddling furnace bloomery finery blast furnace bessemer pneumatic...

02/12/2015

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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


Historical depth of 100 years

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The metallurgical narrative


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


& 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


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


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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ecodesign (use less optimized elements, use 2 less for 2 as long)

SAM-10, Rome, 9-10 May 2015









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


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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


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!

[email protected]

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