PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has released three research papers showcasing that waste coffee grounds and hydrogen could be used in the fabrication of green steel.

Under its Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) Center, the UNSW published the three papers on its Green Steel Polymer Injection Technology (PIT), noting that industrial trials with partner Molycop have shown various wastes can be used to more sustainably make steel in electric arc furnaces.

Wastes including plastic and coffee grounds now join waste rubber tyres as alternative sources to coke and coal as previously vital ingredients as carbon sources for steelmaking, and can provide the element hydrogen which vastly improves the efficiency and energy required for the manufacturing process.

“Steelmakers have to meet the demands of quality requirements. The metal that gets produced doesn’t have any memory of whether the parent material that went in was coal or coffee,” UNSW SMaRT Centre director, Professor Veena Sahajwalla said.

“It gives you the kind of productivity requirements that any commercial operator will want. We’ve proven that it does the job at a comparable level, so we’re going to be at least sitting at an equivalent performance,” she said.

“Australian steelmakers are leaders in the space globally. We’re the first to be able to take all of these technological advances and show that it can be done. The ideal would be if we completely eliminate the coke. If you have a combination of materials, you get a better outcome because you’re able to finetune and customise green steel and take the kinds of materials that do the best job.”

“This is not a waste, it’s a really useful resource. It’s going to be an interesting shift towards valuing our waste resources and thinking about those inno­vative supply chains where recycling and manufacturing can be coupled together,” she said.