Steel Innovation

We are leading innovation to create cleaner greener steel

Swansea University was founded to help meet the needs of industry in a region famous for its expertise in metals. Today the University continues to work together with the steel industry in leading innovation.

Steel is the backbone of today’s world, from buildings and bridges to food cans and fridges. But it’s also an industry of tomorrow. Steel can be recycled infinitely, with no loss of quality - it’s the world’s most recycled material. From high-speed rail and electric cars to solar technology and wind turbines, a cleaner, greener future depends on steel.

Swansea University researchers are leading this innovation, developing tomorrow’s technologies, such as more sustainable transport and buildings.

Engineers are using high-tech imaging equipment to analyse and test a new form of steel which could be used for the chassis of cars and would be lighter than current alternatives, improving efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.

Materials science modelling techniques developed at Swansea are making blast furnaces more efficient at Tata Steel’s Port Talbot works, which are visible from Swansea’s Bay Campus. This has cemented Port Talbot's position in the top quartile in the world for efficiency and quality.

SUSTAIN - a seven-year, £35 million research network led by Swansea University and partnered with the Universities of Sheffield and Warwick. The Hub brings together academic and industrial steelmaking experts to investigate, develop and implement new techniques and technologies to support the de-fossilisation of the UK steel industry on its journey to net-zero emissions by 2050.

In 2018, Swansea University in partnership with Tata Steel founded the Steel and Metals Institute (SaMI), which focuses on steel innovation by delivering practical solutions to industry. Working with UK steel businesses, it aims to decarbonise ironmaking whilst maintaining process efficiency.

The Rapid Alloy Prototyping EPSRC Prosperity Partnership is a collaborative project bringing together Swansea and Warwick University with Tata Steel. It involves using a “virtual factory” to speed up the process of developing and testing new steel alloys, making it up to 100 times faster, and allowing new products to reach the market more quickly.