Innovations in other technologies

Cement recycling image

Cement recycling: 54 years after first deployment, Carbon Capture and Storage touches less than 0.1% of the world's emissions, and with no alternative feedstocks, emissions-free cement production looks impossible. But Cyrille Dunant found a way to recycle it, without emissions, in a steel furnace...

unprinting image

Un-printing office paper: We throw used office paper in the recycling bin when we don't want to read it again, but there's nothing wrong with the paper. We found out how to remove the print, so we could re-use the paper.

Other technology innovation

Other technology innovations: We've looked at two approaches to managing copper contamination in steel recycling, explored variable width strip casting for aluminium, and investigated solid bonding as a low energy technique for recycling aluminium

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Open up the links below for more information and our relevant publications on each topic.

In our Absolute Zero report we revealed that, if it delivered on its legal commitment to zero emissions, the UK should anticipate having a very limited supply of cement in 2050, but that emissions-free electric steel recycling could meet a substantial fraction of our current demand for steel.

This inspired Cyrille Dunant to the most unexpected innovation of our work to date,  proposing that old cement could be recycled if it was used as a substitute for limestone flux in the Electric Arc Furnaces used for recycling steel.  In laboratory conditions (at the Materials Processing Institute in Teesside) this proved successful, and is the basis for our startup company Reclinker Ltd.

Journal publications

Recognising that when office paper is sent for recycling, there is nothing wrong with the paper - we just don't want to read what's printed on it any longer - Tom Counsell spent his PhD exploring three techniques (abrasion, ablation and splitting) to remove toner print from used paper. Each showed promise, but none worked perfectly.

However, following on, David Leal-Ayala started his PhD with a tour of lasers in Cambridge laboratories, and found that green laser light could remove toner print so rapidly, that the heat that vaporised the toner didn't transfer to the paper, so left it clean.

This was the basis of our first startup company, Reduse Ltd, which employed 5 people for two years and build a prototype unprinter capable of cleaning a whole A4 page, but we couldn't find a way to manufacture the green light laser cheaply enough, so had to close the company.

Journal publications

Freddie Follows is completing his PhD on the environmental and emissions impact of aluminium wound motors, particularly to reduce copper contamination in steel recycling.

Katie Daehn had previously looked at options to address this problem, once the copper was melted with the steel.

Dan Cooper, and later James Murray at Nottingham, explored the use of solid-bonding for recycling aluminium.

Martin McBrien invented, constructed and tested a moving electromagnetic edge-dam, to allow variable width continuous casting of aluminium strips.

Journal publications