Delivering Research Impact through Pilot-Scale Demonstration
As a Research and Technology Organisation (RTO) working across the UK Foundation Industries, the Materials Processing Institute (MPI) plays a pivotal role in scaling up innovation from low technology readiness levels (TRL), ready for the next phase of the commercialisation journey.
MPI is a partner in the EPSRC funded Strategic University Steel Technology and Innovation Network (SUSTAIN) Future Steel Manufacturing Research Hub which is delivering cutting edge science and engineering research to create carbon neutral resource-efficient supply chains for the UK steel industry. MPI is supporting the SUSTAIN consortium to demonstrate and scale-up their research at pilot-scale.
Major projects the SUSTAIN team are working on with our support include:
• Demonstrating the behaviour of biomass materials in our 7tonne Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) as a substitute for traditional carbon sources, led by Professor Peter Holliman, Swansea University.
• Setting up a scrap monitoring system to enable software testing on a pilot-scale operation over multiple cycles, led by Professor Zushu Li, University of Warwick.
• Use of our EAF to understand the interaction of argon in liquid steel to allow continuous temperature measurements, led by PhD student Mohammed Kamran, Swansea University.
Dr Lucy Smith, Commercial Director for MPI, said: “It’s crucial that all the exciting research that takes place in UK universities can be demonstrated at a larger scale to determine whether or not commercialisation is feasible. MPI is ideally placed to support the academic community and help fast track new technologies to deliver long-term impact”.
Professor Cameron Pleydell-Pearce, SUSTAIN Director, said: “Translating the fundamental research carried out in SUSTAIN to pilot scale is a critically important step on the road to industrial commercialisation. Working on these trials with MPI will allow us to move a step closer to real-world implementation that benefits the UK steel sector.”
MPI’s recent report highlighting the opportunities and routes to delivering Green Steel for the UK, identifies ongoing innovation and research as strategically important. The stakeholders who attended the 2025 Green Steel Transition Forum emphasised the importance of investing in new technologies to improve productivity and efficiency and the need for pilot projects to enable scale up research to bridge the gap between laboratory-based research and large-scale implementation.
The projects above show that collaboration between academia and RTOs through scaling-up of early-stage research can speed up the proving and commercialisation of technology to benefit the industries and communities they serve.
UK METALS EXPO
10th - 11th September 2025, NEC, Birmingham, UK
If you are planning to visit the UK Metals Expo, you can register using this link: https://register.visitcloud.com/survey/273hyhecn81wq?actioncode=NTWO000148NIL&partner-contact=1ulumr7ocy6ss&verifier=POGM3btADLHPW4Z7YTuAk0UIWSs
We will have an exhibition stand there, so please do call by our Stand (F30) to find out more about how we are supporting the Metals and Foundation Industries to decarbonise, through materials development and process improvements.
Delivering Materials and Process Innovation for a Sustainable Future
2 July 2025
