Steelmaker says it will invest $150 million in direct-reduced iron production in Minnesota.
United States Steel Corp. has announced two projects it says will “expand its low-cost iron ore competitive advantage and increase its self-sufficiency by supplying domestic feedstock” to its electric arc furnace (EAF) steel mills.
U.S. Steel, based in Pittsburgh, owns the Big River EAF mill in Arkansas and is in the process of adding 3 million tons per year of capacity there.
A press release issued by the company in late June does not mention ferrous scrap as a raw material by name. However, the company says the new investment and partnership just announced will contribute double-digit percentages of ore-based feedstock to several melt shops.
To supply its EAF mills, U.S. Steel says it break ground this fall 2022 at one of its two Minnesota Ore facilities, Keetac or Minntac, to construct a system to produce pellets that can be converted to direct-reduced iron (DRI) or hot-briquetted iron (HBI). The company refers to the predecessor material as DR-grade pellets.
U.S. Steel says the $150 million project will enable one of the company’s existing pelletizing plants to “not only create DR-grade pellets” for its EAF melt shops but also “maintain the optionality to continue producing blast furnace-grade pellets.”
The company adds that it will have the option to sell the new pellets to third-party DRI and HBI producers or use them to feed a potential future DRI or HBI facility of its own. The DR-grade pellets produced would be a new product line for U.S. Steel.
To feed its blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace (BOF) mills, U.S. Steel is making a second move to tap into North American iron ore to create feedstock. The company says it has signed a nonbinding letter of intent with Illinois-based SunCoke Energy Inc. to sell that firm two blast furnaces in Granite City, Illinois.
Per the agreement, SunCoke would then build a 2-million-ton-per-year granulated pig iron production facility. Via that project, SunCoke would supply U.S. Steel access to 100 percent of the pig iron produced there for the next 10 years.
“U.S. Steel intends to supply the needed iron ore to be used to produce the pig iron,” the company says. Because the ore would come from U.S. Steel’s own mines, the steelmaker says it would “realize a significant cost advantage.” The resulting pig iron also could be used by EAFs “and is expected to supply U.S. Steel’s growing fleet of EAFs."
“This project significantly enhances SunCoke’s current footprint, allowing us to become a diversified supplier of coke and metallics to the steel industry,” says Mike Rippey, president and CEO of SunCoke. “It also demonstrates our long-term customer’s confidence in SunCoke’s operational and technical expertise.”
“Our conviction remains that steel mined, melted and made in America is vital to our national and economic security,” says David B. Burritt, president and CEO of U.S. Steel. “We are strategically investing in our raw materials that will feed the advanced steel mills of today and tomorrow, making us increasingly self-sufficient.”
U.S. Steel says the two projects join another investment in a pig iron caster at its Gary Works in Indiana. That $60 million investment will produce up to 500,000 tons of pig iron annually and is expected to provide nearly 50 percent of Big River Steel’s ore-based metallics needs, according to the firm.
The conference will be at the University of Portsmouth to find innovative solutions to the global plastics crisis.
The University of Portsmouth in Hampshire, England, will host a plastics recycling conference in the fall called PlasticsFuture 2022. The event is hosted by Revolution Plastics, a university group working to bring together scientists, business leaders, campaigners and citizens to transform how plastic is made and disposed of.
“Our aim is to create a conference unlike any other,” says Steve Fletcher, director of the Global Plastics Policy Centre at the University of Portsmouth. “Technology doesn’t have all the answers and we want to look at alternative untapped sources to solve the global plastic crisis. By bringing together a spectrum of disciplines under one roof, we hope to provoke creative solutions that will provide decision-makers with a rich evidence base on which to build policy.”
The conference will focus on sharing research and initiatives from a broad range of stakeholders, including researchers, activists, community members, nongovernmental organizations, industry, policymakers and practitioners internationally. Experts will share knowledge, discuss recent advancements and reveal exciting new insights in efforts to end plastic pollution. \
“The transdisciplinary nature of the conference will allow a more rounded holistic approach to confronting plastics problems and include expertise from all subject fields,” Fletcher, one of the keynote speakers. “Ultimately, PlasticsFuture 2022 will bring a new philosophical outlook to tackling plastic pollution.”
Von Hernandez from the Philippines, one of Asia’s environmental activists and the global coordinator for the “Break Free from Plastic,” movement.
Nelson Munyiri, the founder of the Mukuru Youth Initiative which engages young people to be agents of change within their communities.
Judi Wakhungu is Kenya’s ambassador to the French Republic, Portugal, Serbia and the Holy See and will also be speaking at Plastics Future 2022. From 2013 to 2018, she served as Kenya's Minister of Environment & Natural Resources.
Plastics Future 2022 will take place Nov. 1-3 at the University of Portsmouth. Registration opens in July. Organizers are now calling for abstracts, short talks, posters, performances, exhibits and proposals to run workshops or chair a panel discussion at the conference.
The University of Portsmouth is home to the Global Plastics Policy Centre, designed to give governments and industry groups the evidence needed to make better decisions around plastic policies and find sustainable solutions to tackle plastic pollution around the world.
The goal is to help stop over half a million pieces of plastic from entering the landfill or other streams.
PureCycle Technologies Inc., Orlando, Florida, and the Jacksonville Jaguars are teaming up to recycle more than 500,000 pieces of plastic waste at TIAA Bank Field.
The Jacksonville Jaguars will implement PureCycle's PureZero waste program, a plastic waste program geared toward stadiums and entertainment venues. Part of the efforts in the first year of the partnership with the Jaguars will be focused on understanding the program's impact on the Jacksonville area.
"PureCycle teamed up with the Jacksonville Jaguars to recycle more than 500,000 pieces of plastic waste to help end the single-use plastic cycle at TIAA Bank Field,” says Mike Otworth, CEO of PureCycle. “With the PureZero program, the Jacksonville Jaguars can help bring plastic waste full circle, helping stop game day plastic trash from being landfilled or flowing into our rivers and oceans."
Polypropylene (PP) is a plastic found at stadiums across America that mostly goes unrecycled because leftover food and liquid make it difficult and costly to recycle. PureCycle will collect, recycle and remove impurities from souvenir stadium cups and food containers to create an ultra-pure recycled plastic that can be recycled repeatedly.
"Alongside citywide facility solutions and other stadium partners of the Jacksonville Jaguars, we're eager to get the PureCycle program implemented in Jacksonville and do our part to reduce plastic waste,” says Ryan Prep, vice president of facilities for the Jaguars. “We hope our fans will join us this season by seeking out recycling containers around the stadium."
PureCycle's partnership with the Jacksonville Jaguars aims to reduce the amount of plastic waste generated at more than 50 games and events. It will also help stock concessions with PP products, creating a circular recycling system and an innovative sustainability plan for the team.
Olyns’ reverse vending machine promotes advertisers while giving rewards to consumers who recycle beverage containers.
Founded in 2019, San Francisco Bay Area startup Olyns has given consumers an outlet to put empty bottles and cans to good use through its reverse vending machine (RVM), the Olyns Cube. For Philip Stanger, co-founder and CEO of Olyns, the idea originated as a reaction to the dismal plastic pollution statistics. Stanger sought a solution to embolden recycling efforts; the answer became the Olyns Cube, a platform that Stanger and his team have launched to provide a user-friendly way to curtail plastic waste. Designed for high-traffic locations such as malls and cinemas, the cube unites sustainability, technology and advertising to make recycling convenient.
Stanger’s expertise lies in technology and advertising, having worked for Apple before starting Olyns. Gaining experience in these disciplines, which he says are parallel to recycling, supplied him with distinct advantages.
“We managed to bring what I think is a fresh perspective to this because we didn’t necessarily have the accepted orthodoxies that were limiting finding a solution,” Stanger says.
Inspired by these other industries, Olyns was able to devise an RVM that can be economically and environmentally sustainable. Currently, Cubes are located in four Safeway supermarkets in California. Two Cubes also were featured at PepsiCo’s Trash Talk activation at SuperBowl LVI.
The key to the Cube’s success, Stanger says, is based on a retail media model. Revenue for the machine is sustained through its use of retail media, which is advertising situated near the point of purchase. Stanger says retail media is facing meteoric growth, while the popularity of online advertising is slowing because of privacy concerns. In the case of the Olyns Cube, retail media comes in the form of 15-second-long full-motion videos on the Cube’s 65-inch screen. This model is what makes the cube financially viable in the long run.
“One of the big problems with recycling, of course, is not the fact that people don’t want to do it—everybody wants to do it. It’s just that they need to have convenience, they need to have the incentives, and then there’s got to be some sort of operational elements that can support it in an efficient way. And in a lot of cases, unless there is government sponsorship in those bottle bill states, it hasn’t existed,” Stanger says.
Advertisers featured on the cube include clothing, food and beverage and banking companies, all of which Stanger says are interested in sustainable products and environmental, social and governance investing. The cube, Stanger says, allows brands to align their messages with a verifiable act of sustainability.
Another core function of the Olyns Cube is its distribution of rewards to people who deposit plastic, aluminum or glass beverage containers.
To gain rewards, a user must download the Olyns app on his or her phone. The app comes with a near field communication, or NFC, card—think Apple Pay or Google Pay—that can be tapped on a cube to access it. Once the user places an empty beverage container into a slot, the cube uses artificial intelligence, or AI, sorting technology to identify the size and type of the bottle, dropping it into one of three compartments that indicate plastic, aluminum or glass material.
Users in bottle bill states, including California and nine other states, would receive money based on state regulations. In California, bottle bill legislation has resulted in the California Redemption Value (CRV), a regulatory fee paid on recyclable beverage containers that ranges from 5 cents for containers less than 24 fluid ounces to 10 cents for containers 24 fluid ounces or larger. Californians will therefore get 5 cents or 10 cents back for depositing a bottle into the Olyns Cube. The money is processed through PayPal, and the user decides whether to put it into a PayPal account or send it to a credit card.
Olyns also is looking to expand to other nonbottle bill states. For these states, the company is deciding how to apply gamification aspects to create a randomized reward system instead.
The app contains two other notable functions to incentivize recycling: a community leaderboard that compares a user’s recycling progress with others and an environmental impact dashboard that shows a user his or her environmental contributions. The dashboard shows the number of deposited containers, the amount of C02 saved and the amount of waste diverted from landfills, oceans and incineration. Stanger says this is a critical feature to reassure those who want an identifiable impact of recycling.
“We’re providing that feedback and giving people that agency to understand that this action is not meaningless, that there is benefit. No matter how small it may seem, it does add up because what we do is we give the individual’s contribution as well as Olyns’ contribution as a community, and people can then see that that individual contribution adds up to quite a significant amount once it’s added to the community,” Stanger says.
Olyns ensures proper Cube maintenance through its use of a gig economy, contracting freelance workers much like rideshare services. The enrolled workers, called “sherpas,” empty cubes that reach full capacity and take the contents to Olyns or a recycling processor. When the app indicates a cube is full using a color-coded system, a sherpa can claim it. Once he or she arrives, the sherpa taps the Cube with the NFC card on his or her Olyns app, which is different than a standard user’s card, to open the machine. Using the app, the sherpa must scan the QR code on each bag within the machine to associate the bags with the sherpa, who is paid upon delivering them. The recyclable bottles that reach a processor are well-sorted and noncontaminated with low levels of liquid due to the AI sorting technology, according to Olyns.
So far, Stanger says reception for the cube has been overwhelmingly positive. They have been filling up faster than the Olyns team thought, sometimes several times per day. According to Olyns, a single Cube can compress and store more than 1,000 plastic containers, 850 aluminum cans and 50 glass bottles, and can deliver two metric tons of clean recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) per year. Olyns is now focused on hardware design and reaching out to more locations.
Another nine Cubes are planned by the end of June, and Stanger says he expects several dozen more in the Bay Area by the end of the year. Olyns also is communicating with companies to introduce pilots outside of California. A pilot project in the South featuring 25 machines potentially could be established near the end of the year, Stanger says.
In terms of hardware, Olyns plans to continue drafting new designs that offer recycling for other products besides beverage bottles. Stanger says Olyns will start collaborating with a major candy manufacturer to create a version of the cube that can recycle plastic candy boxes. These versions of the cube tentatively will be up and running in California near the end of summer. The Cube potentially can be used to collect other recyclables, such as shampoo and detergent containers made of high-density polyethylene.
Olyns’ establishment comes after a wave of recycling facility closures in California. In 2019, California’s largest recycling redemption and processing centers operator, RePlanet, closed all 284 of its remaining centers after first closing 191 centers in 2016. The Olyns Cube avoids this roadblock and others that have kept people from accessing ways to recycle and receive bottle bill benefits.
With new locations, machine versions and collaborations on the horizon, Olyns is determined to maintain rapid growth in the recycling industry.
Initial plans for the joint venture include the construction and operation of a biocarbon production facility to supply SDI's EAF steel mills with a renewable alternative to fossil fuel carbon.
Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI), Fort Wayne, Indiana, has announced the creation of a strategic joint venture with Aymium, a producer of renewable biocarbon products based in Oakdale, Minnesota.
According to a news release, SDI owns 55 percent of the joint venture, with Aymium owning the remaining 45 percent. The entity will operate under the name SDI Biocarbon Solutions LLC. Initial plans for the joint venture include construction and operation of a biocarbon production facility to supply SDI's electric arc furnace steel mills with a renewable alternative to fossil fuel carbon using Aymium's patented technology.
The initial facility's production capability is expected to be more than 160,000 metric tons per year, for an estimated capital investment of $125 million to $150 million. The facility is planned to begin operations in late 2023.
"We are proud to help accelerate our collective goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through this further partnering with Aymium," says Mark D. Millett, chairperson, president and CEO of SDI. "We believe this strategic joint venture will significantly reduce our steelmaking greenhouse gas emissions, which are already materially lower than our global competitors, in a cost-effective manner. We also believe Aymium's process can provide a renewable fossil fuel carbon alternative for Iron Dynamics, our proprietary ironmaking operations.”
The company says it successfully trialed Aymium's biocarbon product in its steel operations and conservatively estimate this first facility will reduce its Scope 1 steelmaking greenhouse gas emissions intensity between 20 and 25 percent, with potential upside from the use of the facility's biogas.
"Our mission is to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and reduce the impact on the environment," says James Mennell, Aymium CEO. "Aymium's renewable biocarbon products allow for immediate replacement of fossil fuels with renewable, carbon-negative inputs, without the need to modify existing manufacturing processes or equipment."