What Does the Future Hold?

The megatrends of the next decades include the relentless growth of the global population, climate change, shortage of raw materials, increasing demand for energy, the shift of economic gravity, the ongoing urbanization trend and the accelerated creation of information networks. These factors will influence, and even dominate, developments on planet Earth in the future.

Within the next two decades, it can be expected that global crude steel demand will increase by approximately 50% to more than two billion tons per year. Aluminum production will grow by 100%–130% to around 100 million t/a. The potential of aluminum and steel is not exhausted yet. Extremely sophisticated aluminum and steel alloys are required for special applications in transportation and energy production, and for specialized manufacturing. More than ever, continually increasing construction and transportation activities are the main driving forces behind the growth in demand for metals.

Sandwiched materials, fiber materials and materials that can change their properties as a function of temperature are widely in use in 2040. They represent a whole new generation of materials with optimized properties for their intended purposes. Top values of material strength, toughness, deformability and other properties exceed by far the benchmark figures in 2016.

Production processes for industrial metals will become increasingly integrated, from the mining of raw materials to the finished surface-coated product. Most metals are still manufactured using so-called traditional process steps, comprising the reduction and smelting of ores and the casting and rolling of solidified slabs or billets. However, new installations and modernizations will all be characterized by resource efficiency with respect to raw materials, yield, energy, space requirements, materials, production wastes, and water consumption. The use of hydrogen for metallurgical work will grow considerably in importance. Information and communication technologies will dominate all areas of metals production and the associated plants and services.

Experts worldwide agree that the metals industry will undergo significant changes over the coming decades. Exciting new developments related to technological processes and applications are inevitable. Primetals Technologies has listened carefully to the views of top managers, entrepreneurs, specialists, and opinion leaders, and doing so has allowed us to take a glimpse into the exciting metals world of tomorrow. Forecasts help identify and quantify future markets, anticipate customer needs, pinpoint technologies with the most significant potential for sustained growth, and uncover new business opportunities that create a better world for society. It is now up to the industry to prepare for what is to come and implement the necessary steps today. Together with its customers and partners, Primetals Technologies is fully committed to “creating the future of metals as one.”

“It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future,” said Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist and Nobel prize winner. Accordingly, predicting the iron- and steelmaking industry in 2116 is a difficult task indeed. Assuming that civilization and society will continue to advance one hundred years from now, the total quantity of steel produced from iron ore since the beginning of ferrous metallurgy thousands of years ago will exceed 150 billion tons. Given the significant global steel supply, more than two-thirds of the steel manufactured each year is derived from recycling and the processing of scrap in electric melting furnaces.

The energy efficiency of the best-available electric steelmaking technologies is close to 90%, compared to the theoretical limit. Waste heat is almost negligible. Solid waste is no longer dumped in landfills, but is entirely recycled in production processes or used by other industries. All mass-produced materials are completely sorted, disassembled, tracked, and reused. The composition of the charge materials for electric steelmaking is well known and specified in advance, thereby minimizing alloying requirements after scrap melting.

Iron- and steelmaking from virgin iron ores is predominantly based on direct-reduction metallurgy. Smelting- reduction technologies such as Corex and Finex prevail, while blast furnaces still in use continue to be optimized. The majority of plants, however, are direct-reduction- based facilities that utilize various reduction gases and energy sources. The total generation of CO₂ per ton of steel is now less than one-fourth of the figure in 2016,

Suppose it is evaluated in accordance with the ISO Lifecycle Assessment methodology. Steelworks are well-honored recycling enterprises and value-added production facilities with a minimum ecological footprint.

Steel is produced on a just-in-time basis. A continuous liquid-steel production process is employed that minimizes the number of required process steps—direct casting and rolling dominate hot-rolled coil production of flat and long steel products. Cold-rolling, annealing, processing, and finishing are fully integrated within a continuous production line for the majority of steel products. This is made possible by the application of highly specialized technologies that are part of an intricate steel service center business.

Operators in hazardous areas of the steel mill are a thing of the past, as robots have fully automated these jobs. In addition, robotic manipulators are performing all quick-change routine procedures and standard maintenance tasks involving the handling of heavy components. The operation and maintenance of iron- and steelmaking plants is entirely remotely controlled from central operation centers. Production is monitored via videos linked to computers, handheld devices, and eyeglasses with augmented reality. Predictive and proactive maintenance is fully optimized and universally applied; hence, unforeseen plant stops no longer occur, especially with the broad adoption of data-based services enabled by machine learning, data mining, cloud computing, and perfected failure forecasting and prediction methodologies.

The former “voodoo magic” of liquid and solid metallurgy has been decrypted to a considerable extent. Metallurgy, technology, and plant operations are completely simulated and modeled using advanced cyber-physical-mathematical tools integrated in sophisticated cascades of computer models. Holistic diagnostics, quality forecasts, and steel recipe prescriptions are applied to assess the status of the production plant, energy-related parameters, through-process product quality, and the required media supply to achieve the targeted product properties.

More than 10,000 primary steel grades are now produced, compared to some 3,500 steel grades in 2016. Key steel properties have dramatically improved thanks to the widespread application of “nano-alloying” and “quantum technologies” – comparable to silicon and germanium micro-structure technologies used in microchips in 2016. The maximum yield strength, toughness, and ductility have doubled during the past 100 years, and near-perfect steel quality is state of the art.

Technological components are not only mechatronic symbiotic solutions equipped with embedded sensors; they also operate autonomously, similar to bees in a swarm. The individual components monitor their own status,

inform or alert the remote control center, and trigger the supply chain for self-substitution, maintenance planning, and wear- and spare-parts ordering.

Thanks to the close cooperation of industrial partners worldwide and the continuous development of value-added steel products, steel will remain competitive and serve as a key indicator of progress and prosperity over the next 100 years.