After overusing the expression Sustainable Development, some action plan was needed to switch from rhetorical to transformational change. One of the answers was to propose the word Transition as a roadmap leading to the necessary level of change. A Transition is a passage from one stable regime to another, with a step that is neither instantaneous nor dangerous, like a Revolution, but is fast enough, anyway. The first Transition in the 2010s was the Energy Transition, i.e. a move towards less fossil fuels and more renewables. It started everywhere more or less at the same time, but Germany and its Energiewende was among the first contenders. The implicit objective was as much to control excessive anthropogenic GHG emissions as it was to possibly start a new period of growth based on green technologies. Very soon, however, the Fukushima disaster convinced Mrs. Merkel to change tack and veer towards “zero nuclear power”, thus aligning with the program of the Green movements. At that point, the Energiewende had become a complex, multi-objectives program for change, not a simple Transition as described at the onset of the paper. The rest of the world turned to Globish and spoke of the Energy Transition (EnT). Each country added a layer of complexity to its own version of the EnT and told a series of narratives, quite different from each other. This is analyzed in the present article on the basis of the documents prepared by the “energy-community”, which assembles hard scientists and economists, a group that the soft scientists of SSH call STEM. EnT, in its most recent and mature version, hardly speaks of energy any more but of GHG emissions. Therefore, EnT drifted towards the expression Ecological Transition (EcT). Both expressions are almost synonymous today. From then on, myriads similar expressions sprang up: Environmental Transition, Demographic, Epidemiological and Environmental Risk Transition, Societal Transitions, Global Transitions, Economic Transition, Sustainability Transition, Socio-Ecological Transitions, Technology Transitions, Nutrition Transition, Agro-Ecological Transition, Digital Transition, Sanitary Transition as well as various practices like Energy Democracy or Theory of Transition. Focusing only on EnT and EcT, a first step consists in comparing energy technologies from the standpoint of their impact on public health: thus, coal is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude worse than renewable energy, not to speak of nuclear. A second step looks at the materials requirement of Renewables, what has been called the materials paradox. They are more materials-intensive and also call on much larger TMRs (Total Materials Requirement). On the other hand, the matter of critical materials has been blown out of proportion and is probably less out of control than initially depicted. A third step is accomplished by Historians, who show that History is full of energy transitions, which did not always go in one direction and did not always match the storyt
{"title":"How to tell the story of change and transition of the energy, ecological and societal systems","authors":"J. Birat","doi":"10.1051/MATTECH/2021005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/MATTECH/2021005","url":null,"abstract":"After overusing the expression Sustainable Development, some action plan was needed to switch from rhetorical to transformational change. One of the answers was to propose the word Transition as a roadmap leading to the necessary level of change. A Transition is a passage from one stable regime to another, with a step that is neither instantaneous nor dangerous, like a Revolution, but is fast enough, anyway. The first Transition in the 2010s was the Energy Transition, i.e. a move towards less fossil fuels and more renewables. It started everywhere more or less at the same time, but Germany and its Energiewende was among the first contenders. The implicit objective was as much to control excessive anthropogenic GHG emissions as it was to possibly start a new period of growth based on green technologies. Very soon, however, the Fukushima disaster convinced Mrs. Merkel to change tack and veer towards “zero nuclear power”, thus aligning with the program of the Green movements. At that point, the Energiewende had become a complex, multi-objectives program for change, not a simple Transition as described at the onset of the paper. The rest of the world turned to Globish and spoke of the Energy Transition (EnT). Each country added a layer of complexity to its own version of the EnT and told a series of narratives, quite different from each other. This is analyzed in the present article on the basis of the documents prepared by the “energy-community”, which assembles hard scientists and economists, a group that the soft scientists of SSH call STEM. EnT, in its most recent and mature version, hardly speaks of energy any more but of GHG emissions. Therefore, EnT drifted towards the expression Ecological Transition (EcT). Both expressions are almost synonymous today. From then on, myriads similar expressions sprang up: Environmental Transition, Demographic, Epidemiological and Environmental Risk Transition, Societal Transitions, Global Transitions, Economic Transition, Sustainability Transition, Socio-Ecological Transitions, Technology Transitions, Nutrition Transition, Agro-Ecological Transition, Digital Transition, Sanitary Transition as well as various practices like Energy Democracy or Theory of Transition. Focusing only on EnT and EcT, a first step consists in comparing energy technologies from the standpoint of their impact on public health: thus, coal is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude worse than renewable energy, not to speak of nuclear. A second step looks at the materials requirement of Renewables, what has been called the materials paradox. They are more materials-intensive and also call on much larger TMRs (Total Materials Requirement). On the other hand, the matter of critical materials has been blown out of proportion and is probably less out of control than initially depicted. A third step is accomplished by Historians, who show that History is full of energy transitions, which did not always go in one direction and did not always match the storyt","PeriodicalId":43816,"journal":{"name":"Materiaux & Techniques","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57960102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Birat, Gael Fick, M. Chiappini, D. Millet, T. Alix, A. Declich, L. Kolbeinsen, V. Colla
* e-mail: j 2020 was a very special year, indeed! The COVID-19 pandemic reminded us that viruses, including pathogenic ones, are part of the biodiversity of the ecosystems in which we are immerged and that a very strong interaction can take place, at the scale of thePlague or the Influenzapandemics of the historical past. This caused time to hiccup and to slow down its pace formonths.The scientific life towhichwewere used suddenly froze. Thus, the 14 Society and Materials Conference, SAM-14, planned for 11-12 May, 2020 in Bordeauxat theuniversityandENSAM,had tobecancelled. Everything was ready to go when that decision was made. A program had been arranged from the answers to the Call for Papers received in January. Keynotes speakers had accepted to come to Bordeaux to share their worldviews. The Jean-Sébastien Thomas Award had been attributed to a “best paper” among a set of candidates. The decision was then made to organize a new event in May 2021, which would be virtual and was to be called SAM-15. Papers selected for SAM-14 would be automatically accepted for SAM-15, if authors were willing to present an updated version in 2021. However, some authors had already sent written contributions to the conference organizing committee and it was decided to collect and present them in a special issue of Matériaux et Techniques, if they willing to go along with this format and passed a further peer-reviewing test. The present special issue is the result of this exercise, where 9 peer-reviewed papers based on contributions to SAM-14 are brought together, out of 38 presentations and keynotes, and 16 posters. The issue is organized around the theme of transitions, a lively, contemporary concept at the
2020年确实是非常特别的一年!2019冠状病毒病大流行提醒我们,病毒,包括致病性病毒,是我们所处生态系统生物多样性的一部分,在历史上鼠疫或流感大流行的规模上,可能会发生非常强烈的相互作用。这使得时间停顿了几个月,放慢了它的步伐。我们所使用的科学生活突然冻结了。因此,计划于2020年5月11日至12日在波尔多大学和德国科学院举行的第14届社会与材料会议(SAM-14)不得不取消。做出这个决定时,一切都准备好了。根据1月份收到的论文征集答复,已经安排了一个项目。主讲人已经同意来波尔多分享他们的世界观。让-萨姆巴斯蒂安·托马斯奖被授予了一组候选论文中的“最佳论文”。然后决定在2021年5月组织一个新的活动,这将是虚拟的,被称为SAM-15。如果作者愿意在2021年提交更新版本,入选SAM-14的论文将自动被SAM-15接受。然而,一些作者已经向会议组织委员会提交了书面稿件,如果他们愿意采用这种格式并通过进一步的同行评阅测试,会议决定将这些稿件收集起来,发表在《matsamriaux et Techniques》的一期特刊上。本期特刊就是这项工作的结果,其中汇集了38篇演讲和主旨演讲以及16张海报中9篇基于SAM-14贡献的同行评议论文。这个问题是围绕过渡的主题组织的,这是一个生动的当代概念
{"title":"Editorial for the special issue on: transitions in society, energy, ecology, materials and other areas","authors":"J. Birat, Gael Fick, M. Chiappini, D. Millet, T. Alix, A. Declich, L. Kolbeinsen, V. Colla","doi":"10.1051/MATTECH/2021009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/MATTECH/2021009","url":null,"abstract":"* e-mail: j 2020 was a very special year, indeed! The COVID-19 pandemic reminded us that viruses, including pathogenic ones, are part of the biodiversity of the ecosystems in which we are immerged and that a very strong interaction can take place, at the scale of thePlague or the Influenzapandemics of the historical past. This caused time to hiccup and to slow down its pace formonths.The scientific life towhichwewere used suddenly froze. Thus, the 14 Society and Materials Conference, SAM-14, planned for 11-12 May, 2020 in Bordeauxat theuniversityandENSAM,had tobecancelled. Everything was ready to go when that decision was made. A program had been arranged from the answers to the Call for Papers received in January. Keynotes speakers had accepted to come to Bordeaux to share their worldviews. The Jean-Sébastien Thomas Award had been attributed to a “best paper” among a set of candidates. The decision was then made to organize a new event in May 2021, which would be virtual and was to be called SAM-15. Papers selected for SAM-14 would be automatically accepted for SAM-15, if authors were willing to present an updated version in 2021. However, some authors had already sent written contributions to the conference organizing committee and it was decided to collect and present them in a special issue of Matériaux et Techniques, if they willing to go along with this format and passed a further peer-reviewing test. The present special issue is the result of this exercise, where 9 peer-reviewed papers based on contributions to SAM-14 are brought together, out of 38 presentations and keynotes, and 16 posters. The issue is organized around the theme of transitions, a lively, contemporary concept at the","PeriodicalId":43816,"journal":{"name":"Materiaux & Techniques","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57959762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
T. Branca, B. Fornai, V. Colla, M. Murri, Eliana Streppa, A. Schröder
The technological transformation in the European steel industry is driven by digitalization, which has the potential to strongly contribute to improving production efficiency and sustainability. The present paper describes part of the work developed in the early stage of the project entitled “Blueprint ‘New Skills Agenda Steel’: Industry-driven sustainable European Steel Skills Agenda and Strategy (ESSA)”, which is funded by the Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Union. The project aims at achieving an industry driven, sustainable and coordinated blueprint for addressing the economic, digital and technological developments, as well as increasing energy efficiency and environmental demands through continuously update of qualification, knowledge and skill profiles of the workforce. On the one hand, main aspects of the current state of the technological transformation in the steel sector are described through the analysis of the main recent innovation projects and developments. On the other hand, survey results from a dedicated questionnaire addressed to the European steel companies are analyzed, providing an overview on the (planned) technological transformation affecting the steel sector. The existing levels of plant automation and the possible adoption of the new paradigm of Industry 4.0 are discussed, by also considering the possible impact on the workforce. Main results are that the steel industry foresees an implementation of almost all Industry 4.0 technologies not only for competitive but also environmental improvement. Because this is foreseen in an incremental way upskilling of the existing workforce is a precondition, not only because of recruitment difficulties on the employment market but also because the existing qualification and experience of the workplace is necessary to unfold the full potential of digital and green transformation.
{"title":"Current and future aspects of the digital transformation in the European Steel Industry","authors":"T. Branca, B. Fornai, V. Colla, M. Murri, Eliana Streppa, A. Schröder","doi":"10.1051/MATTECH/2021010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/MATTECH/2021010","url":null,"abstract":"The technological transformation in the European steel industry is driven by digitalization, which has the potential to strongly contribute to improving production efficiency and sustainability. The present paper describes part of the work developed in the early stage of the project entitled “Blueprint ‘New Skills Agenda Steel’: Industry-driven sustainable European Steel Skills Agenda and Strategy (ESSA)”, which is funded by the Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Union. The project aims at achieving an industry driven, sustainable and coordinated blueprint for addressing the economic, digital and technological developments, as well as increasing energy efficiency and environmental demands through continuously update of qualification, knowledge and skill profiles of the workforce. On the one hand, main aspects of the current state of the technological transformation in the steel sector are described through the analysis of the main recent innovation projects and developments. On the other hand, survey results from a dedicated questionnaire addressed to the European steel companies are analyzed, providing an overview on the (planned) technological transformation affecting the steel sector. The existing levels of plant automation and the possible adoption of the new paradigm of Industry 4.0 are discussed, by also considering the possible impact on the workforce. Main results are that the steel industry foresees an implementation of almost all Industry 4.0 technologies not only for competitive but also environmental improvement. Because this is foreseen in an incremental way upskilling of the existing workforce is a precondition, not only because of recruitment difficulties on the employment market but also because the existing qualification and experience of the workplace is necessary to unfold the full potential of digital and green transformation.","PeriodicalId":43816,"journal":{"name":"Materiaux & Techniques","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57959809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The concepts of Circular Economy and Industrial Symbiosis are nowadays considered by policy makers a key for the sustainability of the whole European Industry. However, in the era of Industry4.0, this results into an extremely complex scenario requiring new business models and involve the whole value chain, and representing an opportunity as well. Moreover, in order to properly consider the environmental pillar of sustainability, the quality of available information represents a challenge in taking appropriate decisions, considering inhomogeneity of data sources, asynchronous nature of data sampling in terms of clock time and frequency, and different available volumes. In this sense, Big Data techniques and tools are fundamental in order to handle, analyze and process such heterogeneity, to provide a timely and meaningful data and information interpretation for making exploitation of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence possible. Handling and fully exploiting the complexity of the current monitoring and automation systems calls for deep exploitation of advanced modelling and simulation techniques to define and develop proper Environmental Decision Support Systems. Such systems are expected to extensively support plant managers and operators in taking better, faster and more focused decisions for improving the environmental footprint of production processes, while preserving optimal product quality and smooth process operation. The paper describes a vision from the steel industry on the way in which the above concepts can be implemented in the steel sector through some application examples aimed at improving socio-economic and environmental sustainability of production cycles.
{"title":"Environment 4.0: How digitalization and machine learning can improve the environmental footprint of the steel production processes","authors":"V. Colla, C. Pietrosanti, E. Malfa, Klaus Peters","doi":"10.1051/MATTECH/2021007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/MATTECH/2021007","url":null,"abstract":"The concepts of Circular Economy and Industrial Symbiosis are nowadays considered by policy makers a key for the sustainability of the whole European Industry. However, in the era of Industry4.0, this results into an extremely complex scenario requiring new business models and involve the whole value chain, and representing an opportunity as well. Moreover, in order to properly consider the environmental pillar of sustainability, the quality of available information represents a challenge in taking appropriate decisions, considering inhomogeneity of data sources, asynchronous nature of data sampling in terms of clock time and frequency, and different available volumes. In this sense, Big Data techniques and tools are fundamental in order to handle, analyze and process such heterogeneity, to provide a timely and meaningful data and information interpretation for making exploitation of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence possible. Handling and fully exploiting the complexity of the current monitoring and automation systems calls for deep exploitation of advanced modelling and simulation techniques to define and develop proper Environmental Decision Support Systems. Such systems are expected to extensively support plant managers and operators in taking better, faster and more focused decisions for improving the environmental footprint of production processes, while preserving optimal product quality and smooth process operation. The paper describes a vision from the steel industry on the way in which the above concepts can be implemented in the steel sector through some application examples aimed at improving socio-economic and environmental sustainability of production cycles.","PeriodicalId":43816,"journal":{"name":"Materiaux & Techniques","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57960175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Metallic aluminium does not naturally occur in nature, and it was largely unknown, virtually a mystery, until 200 years ago. The modern aluminium production using a hydrometallurgical refining process for making alumina followed by electrolysis of this mineral was first developed in 1886 and, in principle, the same technology is still used to this day. About 90% of alumina refineries in the world use the Bayer process for refining Bauxite ore. It is very efficient, but it can only be used on high quality bauxite with low content of admixtures, especially silicon. The Bayer process also generates a Bauxite Residue (BR), maybe better known as Red Mud (RM) which is a thick red-brown, high-basicity paste consisting of silicon, iron, aluminium, titanium and others. The International Institute of Aluminium estimates that since 1886 almost a billion tonnes of aluminium were produced around the world with three fourths of this amount still being in use today, of which about 35% is located in buildings and structures, 30% in electric cables and equipment and 30% in transport. Aluminium scrap is collected all over the world. In the home, it mostly consists of aluminium beverage cans. It is claimed that 1 ton of recycled empty beverage cans save 8 tons of bauxite, 4 kg of various fluorides and 14 kWh of electricity. Additionally, recycling aluminium significantly reduces the negative environmental impact of ever-expanding RM landfills. As the idea of environmental responsibility is gaining more and more traction, separate household scrap recycling is becoming more and more popular around the world. How challenges related to such activity can be met will be the main topic of this paper alongside discussing new developments for alumina production without RM generation.
{"title":"The beginning and the end of the aluminium value chain","authors":"L. Kolbeinsen","doi":"10.1051/MATTECH/2021008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/MATTECH/2021008","url":null,"abstract":"Metallic aluminium does not naturally occur in nature, and it was largely unknown, virtually a mystery, until 200 years ago. The modern aluminium production using a hydrometallurgical refining process for making alumina followed by electrolysis of this mineral was first developed in 1886 and, in principle, the same technology is still used to this day. About 90% of alumina refineries in the world use the Bayer process for refining Bauxite ore. It is very efficient, but it can only be used on high quality bauxite with low content of admixtures, especially silicon. The Bayer process also generates a Bauxite Residue (BR), maybe better known as Red Mud (RM) which is a thick red-brown, high-basicity paste consisting of silicon, iron, aluminium, titanium and others. The International Institute of Aluminium estimates that since 1886 almost a billion tonnes of aluminium were produced around the world with three fourths of this amount still being in use today, of which about 35% is located in buildings and structures, 30% in electric cables and equipment and 30% in transport. Aluminium scrap is collected all over the world. In the home, it mostly consists of aluminium beverage cans. It is claimed that 1 ton of recycled empty beverage cans save 8 tons of bauxite, 4 kg of various fluorides and 14 kWh of electricity. Additionally, recycling aluminium significantly reduces the negative environmental impact of ever-expanding RM landfills. As the idea of environmental responsibility is gaining more and more traction, separate household scrap recycling is becoming more and more popular around the world. How challenges related to such activity can be met will be the main topic of this paper alongside discussing new developments for alumina production without RM generation.","PeriodicalId":43816,"journal":{"name":"Materiaux & Techniques","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57959747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The paper presents some results emerging from the EC funded INNOVEAS project, particularly from a study on the non-economic factors that prevent (or facilitate) the adoption of energy efficiency measures and energy audits by SMEs. This study and its results are relevant for a reflection on the role of SMEs for the adoption of new business practices and technologies (including materials) that are conducive to a green transition. Attention will be paid also to those obstacles and facilitating factors that are relevant for the promotion of the circular economy – which is also, in fact, a strategy for achieving energy efficiency. The paper is based on the view that materials are a special type of technology and, as such, are the result of a social construction process. From this angle, materials can be thought of also by considering the actors involved in the process of their development and use. The life cycle of materials, in particular, must be analyzed also considering the role that different actors play in it; not only the technical characteristics of the materials have to be considered, but also the social context of development and application of materials. Such assumptions can be used also for interpreting the role of the actors in the challenges that contemporary societies are facing, particularly the promotion of energy saving and of the circular economy and more generally the transition towards decarbonization and dematerialization. In this paper, the focus is on a particular type of actors, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). They constitute a plethora of economic actors operating in numerous production sectors and at different levels of the value chains. SMEs orientations are important for achieving a better knowledge of the cycle of materials, especially in relation to the possibility of directing it towards the pursuit of environmental objectives such as energy saving and the circular economy. The paper stresses that considering the role of SMEs in such wide social and economic innovation process should illustrate peculiar aspects of the “internal” life of SMEs (culture, organizational skills, etc.) as well as the interaction with other actors within the context of operation of SMEs.
{"title":"SME’s, energy efficiency, innovation: a reflection on materials and energy transition emerging from a research on SMEs and the practice of Energy Audit","authors":"A. Declich, G. Quinti, Paolo Signore","doi":"10.1051/MATTECH/2020036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/MATTECH/2020036","url":null,"abstract":"The paper presents some results emerging from the EC funded INNOVEAS project, particularly from a study on the non-economic factors that prevent (or facilitate) the adoption of energy efficiency measures and energy audits by SMEs. This study and its results are relevant for a reflection on the role of SMEs for the adoption of new business practices and technologies (including materials) that are conducive to a green transition. Attention will be paid also to those obstacles and facilitating factors that are relevant for the promotion of the circular economy – which is also, in fact, a strategy for achieving energy efficiency. The paper is based on the view that materials are a special type of technology and, as such, are the result of a social construction process. From this angle, materials can be thought of also by considering the actors involved in the process of their development and use. The life cycle of materials, in particular, must be analyzed also considering the role that different actors play in it; not only the technical characteristics of the materials have to be considered, but also the social context of development and application of materials. Such assumptions can be used also for interpreting the role of the actors in the challenges that contemporary societies are facing, particularly the promotion of energy saving and of the circular economy and more generally the transition towards decarbonization and dematerialization. In this paper, the focus is on a particular type of actors, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). They constitute a plethora of economic actors operating in numerous production sectors and at different levels of the value chains. SMEs orientations are important for achieving a better knowledge of the cycle of materials, especially in relation to the possibility of directing it towards the pursuit of environmental objectives such as energy saving and the circular economy. The paper stresses that considering the role of SMEs in such wide social and economic innovation process should illustrate peculiar aspects of the “internal” life of SMEs (culture, organizational skills, etc.) as well as the interaction with other actors within the context of operation of SMEs.","PeriodicalId":43816,"journal":{"name":"Materiaux & Techniques","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57960021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Vincent, R. Sabot, I. Lanneluc, P. Refait, P. Turcry, P-Y. Mahieux, M. Jeannin, S. Sablé
Biomineralization induced by microbial enzymes, which catalyse CaCO3 precipitation, is a promising field of research for various applications in building eco-materials. Especially, this could provide an eco-friendly process for protection of coastal areas against erosion. In the present investigation, fourteen bacterial strains were isolated and characterized from both natural seawater and calcareous deposits formed on a cathodically protected steel mesh in marine environment. All of them induced calcium carbonate precipitation in various media by producing urease and/or carbonic anhydrase enzymes. The calcium carbonate minerals produced by bacteria were identified by microscopy and µ-Raman spectroscopy. In parallel, an experimental set-up, based on a column reactor, was developed to study biomineralization and microbial capacity of Sporosarcina pasteurii to form sandy agglomerate. These well-known calcifying bacteria degraded the urea present in liquid medium circulating through the column to produce calcium carbonate, which acted as cement between sand particles. The bio-bricks obtained after 3 weeks had a compressive strength of 4.2 MPa. 20% of the inter-granular voids were filled by calcite and corresponded to 13% of the total mass. We successfully showed that bio-column system can be used to evaluate the bacterial ability to agglomerate a sandy matrix with CaCO3.
{"title":"Biomineralization of calcium carbonate by marine bacterial strains isolated from calcareous deposits","authors":"J. Vincent, R. Sabot, I. Lanneluc, P. Refait, P. Turcry, P-Y. Mahieux, M. Jeannin, S. Sablé","doi":"10.1051/mattech/2020027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/mattech/2020027","url":null,"abstract":"Biomineralization induced by microbial enzymes, which catalyse CaCO3 precipitation, is a promising field of research for various applications in building eco-materials. Especially, this could provide an eco-friendly process for protection of coastal areas against erosion. In the present investigation, fourteen bacterial strains were isolated and characterized from both natural seawater and calcareous deposits formed on a cathodically protected steel mesh in marine environment. All of them induced calcium carbonate precipitation in various media by producing urease and/or carbonic anhydrase enzymes. The calcium carbonate minerals produced by bacteria were identified by microscopy and µ-Raman spectroscopy. In parallel, an experimental set-up, based on a column reactor, was developed to study biomineralization and microbial capacity of Sporosarcina pasteurii to form sandy agglomerate. These well-known calcifying bacteria degraded the urea present in liquid medium circulating through the column to produce calcium carbonate, which acted as cement between sand particles. The bio-bricks obtained after 3 weeks had a compressive strength of 4.2 MPa. 20% of the inter-granular voids were filled by calcite and corresponded to 13% of the total mass. We successfully showed that bio-column system can be used to evaluate the bacterial ability to agglomerate a sandy matrix with CaCO3.","PeriodicalId":43816,"journal":{"name":"Materiaux & Techniques","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57959935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MFA was born in the 1980s, independently, in various laboratories around the world. On the one hand, Industry was trying then to put numbers on its circular economy practices, while, on the other, Academia endeavored to construct a metaphor of natural ecology (BioGeoChemical Cycles [BGCC]) or of the metabolism of ecosystems to describe the activities of the anthroposphere, especially its material and the energy flows (and stocks). This article briefly reviews the early efforts of Usinor (now ArcelorMittal) in this area, in the framework of a program called “The Cycle of Iron” and points out what it was trying to achieve: basically, analyze and evaluate a true recycling rate (RR) of steel. MFA turned out to be potentially a more powerful tool than ad hoc models of materials circularity too and Industry left the leadership to academic groups to flesh out the new methodology to confront such difficult questions as the evaluation of a RR. Then the article conducts a kind of methodological and epistemological audit of the present status of MFA, positioning it in the wide framework of descriptions of material flows in space and time, and thus picturing it as a competing methodology to LCA. While the former is macro-scale, synchronic, broadly economy-oriented, the latter is micro-scale, diachronic, product and value chain-oriented, while both “report” to different communities, the Industrial Ecology community and the LCA community respectively, and more. Both schools of thoughts have been attending SAM conferences regularly, where they have been reporting their continuous search for new developments and their search for a better sustainability assessment of materials, products, industrial systems and economic activities of all kinds. The various contributions over the first 12 SAM events are analyzed. Finally, MFA and LCA are compared, feature by feature, in terms of the communities they serve and of their strengths and weaknesses. Unsurprisingly, the conclusion is that they are more complementary than competing with each other.
{"title":"MFA vs. LCA, particularly as environment management methods in industry: an opinion","authors":"J. Birat","doi":"10.1051/MATTECH/2021004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/MATTECH/2021004","url":null,"abstract":"MFA was born in the 1980s, independently, in various laboratories around the world. On the one hand, Industry was trying then to put numbers on its circular economy practices, while, on the other, Academia endeavored to construct a metaphor of natural ecology (BioGeoChemical Cycles [BGCC]) or of the metabolism of ecosystems to describe the activities of the anthroposphere, especially its material and the energy flows (and stocks). This article briefly reviews the early efforts of Usinor (now ArcelorMittal) in this area, in the framework of a program called “The Cycle of Iron” and points out what it was trying to achieve: basically, analyze and evaluate a true recycling rate (RR) of steel. MFA turned out to be potentially a more powerful tool than ad hoc models of materials circularity too and Industry left the leadership to academic groups to flesh out the new methodology to confront such difficult questions as the evaluation of a RR. Then the article conducts a kind of methodological and epistemological audit of the present status of MFA, positioning it in the wide framework of descriptions of material flows in space and time, and thus picturing it as a competing methodology to LCA. While the former is macro-scale, synchronic, broadly economy-oriented, the latter is micro-scale, diachronic, product and value chain-oriented, while both “report” to different communities, the Industrial Ecology community and the LCA community respectively, and more. Both schools of thoughts have been attending SAM conferences regularly, where they have been reporting their continuous search for new developments and their search for a better sustainability assessment of materials, products, industrial systems and economic activities of all kinds. The various contributions over the first 12 SAM events are analyzed. Finally, MFA and LCA are compared, feature by feature, in terms of the communities they serve and of their strengths and weaknesses. Unsurprisingly, the conclusion is that they are more complementary than competing with each other.","PeriodicalId":43816,"journal":{"name":"Materiaux & Techniques","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57960089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
T. Branca, I. Matino, V. Colla, A. Petrucciani, Anuradha Singh, A. Zaccara, T. Beone, Luca De Cecco, V. Hakala, D. Lorito, S. Moreira, Elisa Piras
The efficient use of water resources is one of the main challenges of the steel sector, according to the European Union water policy. On this subject, monitoring and optimization systems, linked to the innovative water treatments, represent important tools to improve water management and the related energy use. The present paper describes a part of the work developed in the early stage of the project entitled “Water and related energy Hub Advanced Management system in steelworks – WHAM”, which is co-funded by the Research Fund for Coal and Steel. The project aims at optimizing water consumption in the steelworks through a holistic combination of on-line monitoring and optimisation and innovative water treatment technologies. As different aspects affect water use in the steelmaking processes, in the first part of the paper, the main technical barriers and factors, that can impact on reuse and recirculation of wastewater and energy efficiency, are analysed. The main constraints on water management in the steel sector, such as fresh water availability, its quality and local legal requirements, were considered in order to maximise the water reuse and recycling. Furthermore, the main barriers, such as environmental issues and several costs, were investigated. In the second part of the paper, a set of Key Performance Indicators are listed. They aim at assessing and monitoring the water management sustainability in a holistic way, both in terms of environmental and economic performances, as well as of new water treatments efficiency and their economic viability. Key Performance Indicators will be used to monitor the efficiency of water management, aiming at achieving significant increase of performances. On the other hand, some of these indicators will be used as objective functions for problems optimization. The computation of the selected Key Performance Indicators will take into account both industrial data and results from simulations that will be carried out after the development of suitable tools in order to assess the feasibility of some relevant process modifications or the applications of new technologies.
{"title":"Paving the way for the optimization of water consumption in the steelmaking processes: barriers, analysis and KPIs definition","authors":"T. Branca, I. Matino, V. Colla, A. Petrucciani, Anuradha Singh, A. Zaccara, T. Beone, Luca De Cecco, V. Hakala, D. Lorito, S. Moreira, Elisa Piras","doi":"10.1051/mattech/2021006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/mattech/2021006","url":null,"abstract":"The efficient use of water resources is one of the main challenges of the steel sector, according to the European Union water policy. On this subject, monitoring and optimization systems, linked to the innovative water treatments, represent important tools to improve water management and the related energy use. The present paper describes a part of the work developed in the early stage of the project entitled “Water and related energy Hub Advanced Management system in steelworks – WHAM”, which is co-funded by the Research Fund for Coal and Steel. The project aims at optimizing water consumption in the steelworks through a holistic combination of on-line monitoring and optimisation and innovative water treatment technologies. As different aspects affect water use in the steelmaking processes, in the first part of the paper, the main technical barriers and factors, that can impact on reuse and recirculation of wastewater and energy efficiency, are analysed. The main constraints on water management in the steel sector, such as fresh water availability, its quality and local legal requirements, were considered in order to maximise the water reuse and recycling. Furthermore, the main barriers, such as environmental issues and several costs, were investigated. In the second part of the paper, a set of Key Performance Indicators are listed. They aim at assessing and monitoring the water management sustainability in a holistic way, both in terms of environmental and economic performances, as well as of new water treatments efficiency and their economic viability. Key Performance Indicators will be used to monitor the efficiency of water management, aiming at achieving significant increase of performances. On the other hand, some of these indicators will be used as objective functions for problems optimization. The computation of the selected Key Performance Indicators will take into account both industrial data and results from simulations that will be carried out after the development of suitable tools in order to assess the feasibility of some relevant process modifications or the applications of new technologies.","PeriodicalId":43816,"journal":{"name":"Materiaux & Techniques","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57960161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Calypso Chadfeau, Sayed Hashim Mohseni, S. Omary, Vincent Steiner, E. Belhaj, C. Fond, F. Feugeas
L’objectif de ce travail est de comprendre comment l’adhésion entre le ciment et le coffrage est influencée par la morphologie de la surface du coffrage et l’ajout d’un bioadjuvant. L’ancrage mécanique de la pâte cimentaire est en effet lié à la rugosité de surface du coffrage. Une procédure de caractérisation morphologique des surfaces en contact, coffrage et ciment, est développée par microscopie interférométrique. Elle permet de retenir une échelle d’observation pour laquelle les valeurs des paramètres d’états de surface Sa, Sq, Sdr, Vvc et Vvv, sont représentatifs de la morphologie de surface. Trois états de surface de coffrage différents sont obtenus par polissage et sont caractérisés à l’échelle d’observation. Les paramètres de surfaces sont corrélés avec les performances au décoffrage pour ces trois états de surface. L’action d’un bioadjuvant sur les phénomènes d’adhésion tant au niveau des efforts de décoffrage que de la qualité de parement est évaluée pour trois taux d’incorporation de bioadjuvant. Les résultats mettent en évidence qu’un degré de polissage spécifique combiné à l’utilisation d’un taux de bioadjuvant minimum dans la pâte cimentaire permettent d’atteindre des performances au décoffrage équivalentes à celles obtenues avec un agent décoffrant classique.
{"title":"Influence d’un bioadjuvant sur l’adhésion du ciment sur parois coffrantes et évaluation de l’effet de la rugosité des parois coffrantes","authors":"Calypso Chadfeau, Sayed Hashim Mohseni, S. Omary, Vincent Steiner, E. Belhaj, C. Fond, F. Feugeas","doi":"10.1051/mattech/2020031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/mattech/2020031","url":null,"abstract":"L’objectif de ce travail est de comprendre comment l’adhésion entre le ciment et le coffrage est influencée par la morphologie de la surface du coffrage et l’ajout d’un bioadjuvant. L’ancrage mécanique de la pâte cimentaire est en effet lié à la rugosité de surface du coffrage. Une procédure de caractérisation morphologique des surfaces en contact, coffrage et ciment, est développée par microscopie interférométrique. Elle permet de retenir une échelle d’observation pour laquelle les valeurs des paramètres d’états de surface Sa, Sq, Sdr, Vvc et Vvv, sont représentatifs de la morphologie de surface. Trois états de surface de coffrage différents sont obtenus par polissage et sont caractérisés à l’échelle d’observation. Les paramètres de surfaces sont corrélés avec les performances au décoffrage pour ces trois états de surface. L’action d’un bioadjuvant sur les phénomènes d’adhésion tant au niveau des efforts de décoffrage que de la qualité de parement est évaluée pour trois taux d’incorporation de bioadjuvant. Les résultats mettent en évidence qu’un degré de polissage spécifique combiné à l’utilisation d’un taux de bioadjuvant minimum dans la pâte cimentaire permettent d’atteindre des performances au décoffrage équivalentes à celles obtenues avec un agent décoffrant classique.","PeriodicalId":43816,"journal":{"name":"Materiaux & Techniques","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57960008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}