The team that researched the use of plastic and rubber scrap at a steel mill in Australia worked under the auspices of the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT), housed within the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia.

UNSW created SMaRT to bring together researchers from the science, engineering and built environment departments, as well as the Australian Defence Force Academy, to work in coordination with industry to design sustainable materials and manufacturing processes.

The report “The Power of Steelmaking – Harnessing High Temperature Reactions to Transform Waste Into Raw Material Resources” was based on research conducted by SMaRT along with industry partner Arrium (formerly known as OneSteel).

The report was honored in May 2013 as the Howe Memorial Lecture at the AISTech Conference & Exposition in the United States hosted by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology (AIST, www.aist.org.) The lecture is named in honor of Dr. Henry Marion Howe, a U.S.-born late 19th and early 20th century metallurgist and author who wrote a significant number of essays and textbooks on steelmaking and metallurgy.

The 14 members of the SMaRT research team who contributed to the report were: Dr. Veena Sahajwalla, M. Zaharia, I. Mansuri, R. Rajarao, R. Dhunna, F. Nur Yunos, R. Khanna, N. Saha-Chaudhury, P. O’Kane, A. Fontana, C. Skidmore, P. Vielhauer, D. O’Connell and D. Knights.

Those wishing to see a complete copy of the report can contact AIST at info@aist.org.