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Tata Steel, CPI Order Equipment for New Innovation Center at Teesside
06/09/2011 - The Center for Process Innovation (CPI) and Tata Steel have begun work to establish the national research facility at Tata Steel’s Teesside Technology Center. A recently appointed management team has placed orders for specialist industrial equipment—a gasifier and a pyrolysis unit—that will form the cornerstone of the facility.
The Center for Process Innovation (CPI) and Tata Steel have begun work to establish the national research facility at Tata Steel’s Teesside Technology Center in Grangetown, Middlesbrough, after signing a Memorandum of Understanding last October. A recently appointed management team has placed orders worth £2.5 million for specialist industrial equipment that will form the cornerstone of the facility. Discussions with potential customers are well under way, according to the companies.
The facility will advance high-temperature technologies and cost a total of £5 million to establish. The technologists there will be expected to pioneer new ways of turning waste products into fuels and raw materials crucial for industries such as energy generation, construction, steel, and waste management.
Orders have been placed for the pilot scale industrial plant—a gasifier and a pyrolysis unit. The equipment will be housed in an open-access facility available to companies wanting to test or develop high-temperature processes and will enable testing and demonstration of technologies developed in the laboratory to prove they can work on a commercial scale. Facilities are also available to test the effectiveness of a wide range of materials in gasification and pyrolysis processes.
The gasifier is a 2-m-wide furnace that can handle a range of feedstocks such as unusable oils and organic wastes and convert them into the low-carbon fuels of the future. The pyrolysis unit will convert waste materials and biomass into liquid and gaseous fuels.
The high-temperature pilot facility is due to open next spring and is expected to employ at least 30 people by 2020.
The project is receiving £2.5 million from One North East through the Tees Valley Industrial Program. Tata Steel and CPI are investing the remaining £2.5 million.
The Center for Process Innovation (CPI) is a key part of the Government’s first elite technology innovation center, focusing in the area of high-value manufacturing. It offers market and technology expertise along with development assets to help its public and private sector clients build and prototype the next generation of products, processes, and services quickly and efficiently, and with minimal risk. CPI has designed and established national technology centers in Printable Electronics and Industrial Biotechnology.
The European operations of Tata Steel (formerly known as Corus) comprise Europe's second largest steel producer. With main steelmaking operations in the U.K. and the Netherlands, it supplies steel and related services to the construction, automotive, packaging, material handling, and other demanding markets worldwide. Tata Steel is one of the world’s top 10 steel producers. The combined group has an aggregate crude steel capacity of more than 28 million tonnes and approximately 80,000 employees across four continents.
Tata Steel Research Development & Technology has technology centers in Teesside and Rotherham in the U.K., IJmuiden in the Netherlands, and Jamshedpur in India. The work carried out by its scientists, researchers, and engineers focuses on process and product innovations, enhancing the Group’s competitiveness by improving the quality, applicability, and sustainability of steels.
