The Transforming the Foundation Industries Challenge has set out the background of the six foundation industries; cement, ceramics, chemicals, glass, metals and paper, which produce 28 Mt pa (75% of all materials in our economy) with a value of £52Bn but also create 10% of UK CO2 emissions. These materials industries are the root of all supply chains providing fundamental products into the industrial sector, often in vertically-integrated fashion. They have a number of common factors: they are water, resource and energy-intensive, often needing high temperature processing; they share processes such as grinding, heating and cooling; they produce high-volume, often pernicious waste streams, including heat; and they have low profit margins, making them vulnerable to energy cost changes and to foreign competition. Our Vision is to build a proactive, multidisciplinary research and practice driven Research and Innovation Hub that optimises the flows of all resources within and between the FIs. The Hub will work with communities where the industries are located to assist the UK in achieving its Net Zero 2050 targets, and transform these industries into modern manufactories which are non-polluting, resource efficient and attractive places to be employed. TransFIRe is a consortium of 20 investigators from 12 institutions, 49 companies and 14 NGO and government organisations related to the sectors, with expertise across the FIs as well as energy mapping, life cycle and sustainability, industrial symbiosis, computer science, AI and digital manufacturing, management, social science and technology transfer. TransFIRe will initially focus on three major challenges: 1 Transferring best practice - applying "Gentani": Across the FIs there are many processes that are similar, e.g. comminution, granulation, drying, cooling, heat exchange, materials transportation and handling. Using the philosophy Gentani (minimum resource needed to carry out a process) this research would benchmark and identify best practices considering resource efficiencies (energy, water etc.) and environmental impacts (dust, emissions etc.) across sectors and share information horizontally. 2 Where there's muck there's brass - creating new materials and process opportunities. Key to the transformation of our Foundation Industries will be development of smart, new materials and processes that enable cheaper, lower-energy and lower-carbon products. Through supporting a combination of fundamental research and focused technology development, the Hub will directly address these needs. For example, all sectors have material waste streams that could be used as raw materials for other sectors in the industrial landscape with little or no further processing. There is great potential to add more value by "upcycling" waste by further processes to develop new materials and alternative by-products from innovative processing technologies with less environmental impact. This requires novel industrial symbioses and relationships, sustainable and circular business models and governance arrangements. 3 Working with communities - co-development of new business and social enterprises. Large volumes of warm air and water are produced across the sectors, providing opportunities for low grade energy capture. Collaboratively with communities around FIs, we will identify the potential for co-located initiatives (district heating, market gardening etc.). This research will highlight issues of equality, diversity and inclusiveness, investigating the potential from societal, environmental, technical, business and governance perspectives. Added value to the project comes from the £3.5 M in-kind support of materials and equipment and use of manufacturing sites for real-life testing as well as a number of linked and aligned PhDs/EngDs from HEIs and partners This in-kind support will offer even greater return on investment and strongly embed the findings and operationalise them within the sector.

Summary Unlike other materials for engineering applications, metals, such as aluminium and magnesium, can be recycled repeatedly without loss of their inherent properties. Recycling metals is not only economically viable, but also extremely beneficial for conservation of limited natural resources, reduction of energy consumption and waste generation, all contributing positively to a sustainable economy. One of the main barriers to the increased use of recycled light alloy scrap (both process scrap (new) and post consumer scrap (old)) is the existence of excessive levels of inclusions and impurity elements, which usually leads to downgrading into materials with poorer mechanical properties and reduced corrosion resistance. The prime objective of the proposed project is to break down this barrier and prevent market failure through the application of the step-change rheoforming technologies to allow the re-use of aluminium and magnesium alloy scrap in high-level automotive and other value added applications. The technical approach is to convert melts of recycled light alloy scrap into a semi-solid slurry using a twin screw slurry maker (TSSM) combined with a slurry accumulator and to feed this into a rheodiecaster for near net shape components, or a rheoextruder for continuous extruded profiles. Owing to the intensive forced convection in the TSSM, both inclusions and impurity elements (usually as intermetallic compounds in the solidified microstructure) will be divided into extremely fine particles and dispersed uniformly throughout the entire casting, eliminating/reducing the detrimental effects to ductility and corrosion resistance. This will result in extensive materials re-use, producing castings and extruded sections of aluminium and magnesium alloys made from selected combinations of post consumer scrap (PCS) supplied by Norton Aluminium and magnesium diecasting scrap supplied by Meridian. The mechanical performance and corrosion properties of the rheoformed products will be assessed against current production aluminium and magnesium castings and wrought products made from conventional primary metal based melts. For magnesium the emphasis of the project will be on production of rheodiecastings with a much smaller activity on wrought products, whilst for aluminium the emphasis will be both on high performance castings and on wrought products, particularly rheoextrusions. The work at BCAST will focus on the following aspects: (1) As the technology provider, BCAST team will focus on developing the rheoforming technologies, particularly the rheo-diecasting and the rheoextrusion processes, for upcycling light alloy scrap into high quality components for automotive and other general engineering applications. This will include design, commissioning and optimisation of the rheoextruder, integration of the rheoextruder with the slurry supply system. (2) The BCAST team will characterise the chemical compositions, microstructures, mechanical properties and corrosion resistance of rheoformed products produced from different scrap sources. The results will feed into the process optimisation programme as guidelines, and will also be used to understand the relationships between chemical composition, processing conditions and engineering performance. (3) The BCAST team will assist the industrial scale trials for rheoforming Al scrap at Norton Aluminium and for rheo-diecasting of magnesium scrap at Meridian. The project will develop a unique UK partnership of material producers, recyclers, technology providers and product manufacturers to develop a novel processing route for increasing the re-use and recycled content of light alloy materials by upcycling into higher-value products. Such a collaborative development will enable rapid UK commercial exploitation and will reduce dependency on imported products.

The UK metal casting industry is a key player in the global market. It adds 2.6bn/year to the UK economy, employs directly around 30,000 people and produces 1.14 billion tons of metal castings, of which 37% is for direct export (Source: CMF, UK). It underpins the competitive position of every sector of UK manufacturing across automotive, aerospace, defence, energy and general engineering. However, its 500 companies are mainly SMEs, who are often not in a position to undertake the highest quality R&D necessary for them to remain competitive in global markets. The current EPSRC IMRC portfolio does not cover this important research area nor does it address this clear, compelling business need. We propose to establish IMRC-LiME, a 3-way centre of excellence for solidification research, to fill this distinctive and clear gap in the IMRC portfolio. IMRC-LiME will build on the strong metal casting centres already established at Brunel, Oxford and Birmingham Universities and their internationally leading capabilities and expertise to undertake both fundamental and applied solidification research in close collaborations with key industrial partners across the supply chain. It will support and provide opportunities for the UK metal casting industry and its customers to move up the value chain and to improve their business competitiveness. The main research theme of IMRC-LiME is liquid metal engineering, which is defined as the treatment of liquid metals by either chemical or physical means for the purpose of enhancing heterogeneous nucleation through manipulation of the chemical and physical nature of both endogenous (naturally occurring) and exogenous (externally added) nucleating particles prior to solidification processing. A prime aim of liquid metal engineering is to produce solidified metallic materials with fine and uniform microstructure, uniform composition, minimised casting defects and hence enhanced engineering performance. Our fundamental (platform) research theme will be centred on understanding the nucleation process and developing generic techniques for nucleation control; our user-led research theme will be focused on improving casting quality through liquid metal engineering prior to various casting processes. The initial focus will be mainly on light metals with expansion in the long term to a wide range of structural metals and alloys, to eventually include aluminium, magnesium, titanium, nickel, steel and copper. In the long-term IMRC-LiME will deliver: 1) A nucleation-centred solidification science, that represents a fundamental move away from the traditional growth-focused science of solidification. 2) A portfolio of innovative solidification processing technologies, that are capable of providing high performance metallic materials with little need for solid state deformation processing, representing a paradigm shift from the current solid state deformation based materials processing to a solidification centred materials engineering. 3) An optimised metallurgical industry, in which the demand for metallic materials can be met by an efficient circulation of existing metallic materials through innovative technologies for reuse, remanufacture, direct recycling and chemical conversion with limited additions of primary metal to sustain the circulation loop. This will lead to a substantial conservation of natural resources, a reduction of energy consumption and CO2 emissions while meeting the demand for metallic materials for economic growth and wealth creation.

The UK has recently become the first major economy in the world committed to bring all greenhouse gas emission to net zero by 2050. The emphasis of the metal industry, a vital part of the UK's foundation industries, but a challenging area to deep decarbonise, is to develop new ways to produce and recycle metallic materials in an energy-efficient, low-cost and sustainable manner. Solidification is an important route for manufacturing and recycling of metals and alloys. Use of magnetic fields to control solidification has been researched for several decades with a variety of applications ranging from metal purification to advanced liquid metal processing. Successful examples include removing ceramic particles from aluminium melts and improving the internal quality of cast steels. There is huge potential for magnetic fields to be used in new applications such as metal recycling and advanced processing. Magnetic fields have a strong interaction with molten metals and alloys. The interaction is governed by the induced Lorentz force, which modulate the flow of the liquid molten alloys. My recent article [1] demonstrated that the interaction between magnetic fields and molten alloys can be controlled , paving the way towards novel methods for optimizing how magnetic fields can be used in industrial-scale manufacturing and recycling processes. I believe this technology will produce substantial improvements over the current state-of-the-art in process efficiency and materials performance. My recent patent (WO2020/012199A1) using this concept has shown that contaminated iron element in aluminium alloys can be driven out by magnetic fields when aluminium alloys are at the molten state, and subsequently the impurity can be removed effectively, a challenge that metallurgists have struggled to overcome after 40 years of research. The overarching aim of the Fellowship is to develop innovative magnet assemblies for materials manufacturing and recycling. This work will be underpinned by fundamental studies to uncover key underlying mechanisms. Based on my previous discovery and feasibility studies, in this Fellowship, I will develop patentable techniques utilizing magnetic fields for (1) the purification of recycled Al alloys, (2) the property improvement of high temperature alloys and (3) the microstructure control of metal additive manufacturing (3D printing). The Fellowship will accelerate the process of bringing the innovation from the lab to the market, as it provides unique opportunities to work with key industry partners. I will also address the underlying mechanisms for MHD control using a multidisciplinary approach, building upon my Turing Fellowship, coupling synchrotron based 4D (3D plus time) observation, data-driven analytics, and multi-physics modelling. This will not only lay strong foundations for process optimization, but also accelerate the development of entirely new solutions for incorporating MHD in manufacturing and recycling. The success of the Fellowship will increase the competitiveness of the UK's metal industries including aluminium recycling, casting, and additive manufacturing. [1] Cai et a. Acta materialia, 2020(196): 200-209 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2020.06.041

Natural resources are the foundation of our life on Earth, without which neither our economy nor society can function. However, due to continued resource overconsumption and the rapidly increasing world population, the global demand for natural resources and the related intense pressure on our environment have reached an unprecedented and unsustainable level. A shocking fact is that our cumulative consumption of natural resources over the last 60 years is greater than that over the whole of previous human history. With an anticipated world population of 9.3bn in 2050, the predicted global natural resource consumption will be almost tripled. This level of overconsumption is obviously not sustainable, and there is a compelling need for us to use our advanced science and technology to work with, rather than to exploit, nature. Metallic materials are the backbone of manufacturing and the fuel for economic growth. However, metal extraction and refining is extremely energy intensive and causes a huge negative impact on our environment. The world currently produces 50MT of Al and 2bnT of steel each year, accounting for 7-8% of the world's total energy consumption and 8% of the total global CO2 emission. Clearly, we cannot continue this increasing and dissipative use of our limited natural resources. However, the good news is that metals are in principle infinitely recyclable and that their recycling requires only a small fraction of the energy required for primary metal production. Between 1908 and 2007 we produced 833MT of aluminium, 506MT of copper and 33bnT of steels. It is estimated that more than 50% of this metal still exists as accessible stock in our society. Such metal stock will become our energy "bank" and a rich resource for meeting our future needs. The UK metal casting industry adds £2.6bn/yr to the UK economy, employs 30,000 people, produces 1.14bnT of metal castings per year and underpins the competitive position of every sector of UK manufacturing. However, the industry faces severe challenges, including "hollowing-out" over the past 30 years, increasing energy and materials costs, tightening environmental regulations and a short supply of skilled people. We are now establishing the Future Liquid Metal Engineering Hub to address these challenges. The core Hub activities will be based at Brunel strongly supported by the complementary expertise of our academic spokes at Oxford, Leeds, Manchester and Imperial College and with over £40M investment from our industrial partners. The Hub's long-term vision is full metal circulation, in which the global demand for metallic materials is met by a full circulation of secondary metals (with only limited addition of primary metals each year) through reduced usage, reuse, remanufacture, closed-loop recycling and effective recovery and refining of secondary metals. This represents a paradigm shift for metallurgical science, manufacturing technology and the industrial landscape. The Hub aims to lay down a solid foundation for full metal circulation, demonstrated initially with light metals and then extended to other metals in the longer term. We have identified closed-loop recycling of metallic materials as the greatest challenge and opportunity facing global manufacturing industry, and from this we have co-created with our industrial partners the Hub's research programme. We will conduct fundamental research to deliver a nucleation centred solidification science to underpin closed-loop recycling; we will carry out applied research to develop recycling-friendly high performance metallic materials and sustainable metal processing technologies to enable closed-loop recycling; we will operate a comprehensive outreach programme to engage potential stakeholders to ensure the widest possible impact of our research; we will embed a centre for doctoral training in liquid metal engineering to train future leaders to deliver long-lasting benefits of closed-loop recycling.