Once again, we have arranged a SFI Metal Production autumn meeting with 70 participants from the SFI-partners. Both industry and academia participants seemed to be satisfied with the program and the interesting lectures. 

This years final quarterly Newsletter is out!
We at the SFI would like to wish every one of you a very merry christmas!

Parlamentary politician Sivert Bjørnstad together with his colleagues, Tore Kristiansen and Mats Henriksen Persøy, visited NTNU on Monday. The centre leader, Aud N. Wærnes, together with Anne Kvithyld, Martin Syvertsen and Leiv Kolbeinsen informed about SFI Metal Production and gave some pictures of the research going on at the centre. Discussions turned on SFI centre as an instrument for strengthening Norwegian research and innovation.

This autumn Raghed Saadieh got Elkem’s forskningsfond (EFF) award. It is an award both for academic performance as well as contributing to the non-academic side of the student life.

The agenda for the Autumn Meeting is out, read it here!

Several new faces are now to be seen in the Centre corridors and laboratories this autumn. In August one postdoc and three PhD’s started their work in the Centre.

The Autumn is well underway here at the SFI, and there are many exiiting things going on. Read about everything in the newsletter!

More than 50 experts on the metallurgical industry met in Kristiansand to discuss how mathematical models can improve metal production. The two-day conference, Mathematical Modelling in Metallurgical Industry, is part of a cooperation within SFI Metal Production, a Centre for Research-Based Innovation (SFI), hosted by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), with SINTEF and Teknova as research partners.

The Nature Conference, Minerals and Materials for a Sustainable Future was arranged in Trondheim September 11-13th. Several persons from SFI Metal Production were involved during these three days. Merete Tangstad was chair for the session Sustainability and responsible resourcing of minerals and materials. Arne Petter Ratvik and Daniel Beat Müller were speakers on the topics Apatite fertilisers production and Monitoring of physical economy, respectively. Norsk Hydro’s Hans Erik Vatne talked about the value chain approach to sustainable production of aluminium products.

Congratulation to Dr. Pyunghwa Peace Kim who successfully defended his thesis September 12th. Peace did an excellent job, first with an impressive presentation of the trial lecture “Slag Foaming” and further with the presentation of his PhD thesis and the defence.

In week 37, a conference on minerals and materials will be held in Trondheim. The conference is hosted by the renowned research journal Nature, in collaboration with NTNU, SINTEF and NGU.

Pyunghwa Peace Kim is the first PhD student finishing the doctoral degree at SFI Metal Production. He has submitted the following academic thesis as part of the doctoral work at the Norwegian University of Science (NTNU):

“The Reduction Rates of SiMn Slags from Various Raw Materials”

Norwegian-Canadian Partnership in Research and Education on Primary Production of Aluminium (CaNAl)

During three days this week, 8-10th of August,  the Intpart project CaNAl arrange their Kick-off meeting continued by two days of Summer School. 

This has been an exiting spring for us here at the SFI, read more about the events and all our summer students in Newsletter Q2/18!

Design and operation of metallurgical processes have been gradually improved through industrial experience, research, modern process control, new and/or improved measurements, etc. Nevertheless, due to high temperatures and several complexities, the design and operation of the processes are still to a large degree empirically based, and several process variations are not properly understood.

On June 4th this year’s master students of the REM-group (Resources, Energy & Environment) had the end-of-term celebration day. The day started with an introductory speech by the head of department, Jostein Mårdalen. 

As a part of the transition between our first and second generation of alumina students, a field trip to Alcoa Mosjøen was arranged.

This year, Leandro Gustavo Mendes de Jesus will be finishing the last year of his PhD program here at SFI Metal Production. He arrived in the middle of March and will be staying until late December, and his work is centred around waste products from production of manganese in Brazil. His supervisor is Prof. Merete Tangstad. We sat down with Leandro to talk about his work and stay in Norway.

The BEST project is an innovation project with Hydro Aluminium as project owner. The project is funded by the research council of Norway and the industry partners and the research partners are SINTEF Industry and NTNU. We got a chance to sit down with Mertol Gökelma, who is the new postdoctoral researcher representing NTNU in the project. His main topic for the postdoc period is to carry on the research activities for the inclusion removal from Al-melts and co-supervision of relevant student theses with Prof. Gabriella Tranell

NTNU has just adopted a new strategy for innovation and is currently appointing 15 innovation managers to help transform more research into practice. The positions form part of the NTNU Strategic Programme for Knowledge-Based Innovation: https://www.ntnu.edu/innovation-resources/knowledge-based-innovation