The prescribed title for the trial lecture was “Quality Control in Steel Recycling: Managing Impurities and Tramp Elements”. The doctoral work has been carried out at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, where Professor Marisa Di Sabatino has been the candidate’s supervisor. Professor Yanjun Li, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, NTNU, Dr. Leander Michels, former ELKEM and now Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL),  US. and Emeritus Professor, Lars Arnberg, NTNU, has been the candidate’s co-supervisors. The Assessment committee consisted of Emeritus Professor Jacques Lacaze, University of Toulouse, France (1. Opponent) and Professor Babette Tonn, TU Clausthal, Germany (2. Opponent) and with Professor Knut Marthinsen, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, NTNU serving as the administrator of the Assessment Committee. 

The PhD work of Andreas Bugten has been related to cast iron, an ancient material, but still widely used in modern industries. Its strength and toughness come from tiny, usually round, graphite particles formed as the iron cools. Recycled steel is often added to cast iron for cost and environmental reasons, but this can introduce unwanted elements like boron. Even in small amounts, boron softens cast iron and disrupts the normal graphite shape, harming mechanical performance. Andreas’ PhD work has shown that boron tends to accumulate near the surface of the graphite particles as the metal cools, causing sharp spikes instead of smooth particles. This change draws more carbon out of the iron, making it softer. The work of Andreas has made significant contributions to the understanding of these effects and provided a scientific basis for developing strategies to control and mitigate them, and as such provided important knowledge for a more sustainable, scrap-based cast iron industry.

The PhD work of Andreas Voll Bugten has been fully funded by SFI PhysMet and has been carried out in close collaboration with our industrial partner Elkem. We are grateful to Elkem for their support, for hosting large casting campaigns and for the materials they have provided to Andreas’s PhD work. The PhD defence of Andreas Voll Bugten is a real milestone for SFI PhysMet, as Andreas is the first PhD candidate fully funded by the SFI. We look forward to several PhD defences early next year.