Students interested in the field of materials engineering are welcome to apply for the Summer School
Metallurgy is a key enabler of a circular economy, its digitalisation is the metallurgical Internet of Things (m-IoT). In short: Metallurgy is at the heart of a CE, as metals all have strong intrinsic recycling potentials. Process metallurgy, as a key enabler for a CE, will help much to deliver its goals. The first-principles models of process engineering help quantify the resource efficiency (RE) of the CE system, connecting all stakeholders via digitalization. This provides well-argued and first-principles environmental information to empower a tax-paying consumer society, policy, legislators, and environmentalists. It provides the details of capital expenditure and operational expenditure estimates. Through this path, the opportunities and limits of a CE, recycling, and its technology can be estimated. The true boundaries of sustainability can be determined in addition to the techno-economic evaluation of RE. The integration of metallurgical reactor technology and systems digitally, not only on one site but linking different sites globally via hardware, is the basis for describing CE systems as dynamic feedback control loops, i.e., the m-IoT. It is the linkage of the global carrier metallurgical processing system infrastructure that maximizes the recovery of all minor and technology elements in its associated refining metallurgical infrastructure.
On 13-16 July 2020 in Leuven, this course will illustrate some of these concepts with hands-on training using a process simulator.
The course participants will after this course have been exposed among others to:
- Flowsheeting of physical separation, metallurgical and recycling systems by hands-on use of simulation software (HSC Sim) – various systems will be explored
- Evaluation of the resource efficiency of these flowsheets e.g. using exergy, LCA tools etc. thus linking simulation and foot-printing.
- The students acquire knowledge about the use of English terms in non-ferrous process metallurgy as well as physical recycling in addition to design for recycling.
Study load: 3 ECTS
Target group
Students that want to make a change by fundamentally understanding the CE system. Systemic thinkers that want to understand Circular Economy Engineering in the context of process metallurgy, recycling and design for recycling will find this valuable. Therefore, metallurgical knowledge, process engineering as well as simulation interest would be valuable. Exposure to the economics of engineering systems will also help to develop the case studies in this course.
