Future Liquid Metal Engineering Hub

自然资源是我们在地球上生活的基础，没有自然资源，我们的经济和社会都无法运转。然而，由于持续的资源过度消耗和世界人口的迅速增长，全球对自然资源的需求及其对我们环境的巨大压力已经达到前所未有的不可持续的水平。一个令人震惊的事实是，我们在过去60年中对自然资源的累积消耗比人类历史上的整个消耗都要大。预计2050年全球人口将达到93亿，预计全球自然资源消耗量将增加近两倍。这种过度消费的程度显然是不可持续的，我们迫切需要利用我们的先进科学和技术来与自然合作，而不是开发自然。金属材料是制造业的支柱和经济增长的燃料。然而，金属提取和精炼是极其耗能的，对我们的环境造成了巨大的负面影响。目前，全球每年生产5000万吨铝和20亿吨钢，占世界总能源消耗的7%-8%，占全球二氧化碳排放总量的8%。显然，我们不能继续增加和消耗我们有限的自然资源。然而，好消息是，金属原则上是无限可回收的，它们的回收只需要初级金属生产所需能源的一小部分。在1908年至2007年期间，我们生产了833公吨铝、506公吨铜和33bnT钢。据估计，超过50%的这种金属仍然作为可获得的库存存在于我们的社会中。这些金属库存将成为我们的能源“银行”和丰富的资源，以满足我们未来的需求。英国金属铸造业每年为英国经济带来26亿GB的收入，雇佣了3万名员工，每年生产11.4亿吨金属铸件，支撑着英国制造业各个行业的竞争地位。然而，该行业面临着严峻的挑战，包括过去30年的“空心化”、能源和材料成本的增加、环境法规的收紧以及技能人才短缺。我们现在正在建立未来液态金属工程中心，以应对这些挑战。中心的核心活动将设在布鲁内尔，我们在牛津、利兹、曼彻斯特和帝国理工学院的学术发言人将大力支持我们的互补专业知识，我们的行业合作伙伴将提供超过4000万GB的投资。该中心的长期愿景是实现金属全流通，即通过减少使用、再利用、再制造、闭路循环以及有效回收和提炼二次金属，实现二次金属的全流通(每年只增加有限的初级金属)，以满足全球对金属材料的需求。这代表着冶金科学、制造技术和工业格局的范式转变。该中心旨在为充分的金属流通奠定坚实的基础，最初以轻金属为示范，然后在较长期内扩展到其他金属。我们已将金属材料的闭环回收确定为全球制造业面临的最大挑战和机遇，并由此与我们的行业合作伙伴共同创建了Hub的研究计划。我们将开展基础研究，以提供以成核为中心的凝固科学，以支持闭合循环回收；我们将开展应用研究，以开发有利于回收的高性能金属材料和可持续金属加工技术，以实现闭合循环回收；我们将实施一项全面的外联计划，以吸引潜在的利益相关者，以确保我们的研究产生尽可能广泛的影响；我们将建立一个液态金属工程博士培训中心，以培训未来的领导者，以提供闭合循环回收的长期好处。

Natural resources are the foundation of our life on Earth, without which neither our economy nor society can function. However, due to continued resource overconsumption and the rapidly increasing world population, the global demand for natural resources and the related intense pressure on our environment have reached an unprecedented and unsustainable level. A shocking fact is that our cumulative consumption of natural resources over the last 60 years is greater than that over the whole of previous human history. With an anticipated world population of 9.3bn in 2050, the predicted global natural resource consumption will be almost tripled. This level of overconsumption is obviously not sustainable, and there is a compelling need for us to use our advanced science and technology to work with, rather than to exploit, nature. Metallic materials are the backbone of manufacturing and the fuel for economic growth. However, metal extraction and refining is extremely energy intensive and causes a huge negative impact on our environment. The world currently produces 50MT of Al and 2bnT of steel each year, accounting for 7-8% of the world's total energy consumption and 8% of the total global CO2 emission. Clearly, we cannot continue this increasing and dissipative use of our limited natural resources. However, the good news is that metals are in principle infinitely recyclable and that their recycling requires only a small fraction of the energy required for primary metal production. Between 1908 and 2007 we produced 833MT of aluminium, 506MT of copper and 33bnT of steels. It is estimated that more than 50% of this metal still exists as accessible stock in our society. Such metal stock will become our energy "bank" and a rich resource for meeting our future needs. The UK metal casting industry adds £2.6bn/yr to the UK economy, employs 30,000 people, produces 1.14bnT of metal castings per year and underpins the competitive position of every sector of UK manufacturing. However, the industry faces severe challenges, including "hollowing-out" over the past 30 years, increasing energy and materials costs, tightening environmental regulations and a short supply of skilled people. We are now establishing the Future Liquid Metal Engineering Hub to address these challenges. The core Hub activities will be based at Brunel strongly supported by the complementary expertise of our academic spokes at Oxford, Leeds, Manchester and Imperial College and with over £40M investment from our industrial partners. The Hub's long-term vision is full metal circulation, in which the global demand for metallic materials is met by a full circulation of secondary metals (with only limited addition of primary metals each year) through reduced usage, reuse, remanufacture, closed-loop recycling and effective recovery and refining of secondary metals. This represents a paradigm shift for metallurgical science, manufacturing technology and the industrial landscape. The Hub aims to lay down a solid foundation for full metal circulation, demonstrated initially with light metals and then extended to other metals in the longer term. We have identified closed-loop recycling of metallic materials as the greatest challenge and opportunity facing global manufacturing industry, and from this we have co-created with our industrial partners the Hub's research programme. We will conduct fundamental research to deliver a nucleation centred solidification science to underpin closed-loop recycling; we will carry out applied research to develop recycling-friendly high performance metallic materials and sustainable metal processing technologies to enable closed-loop recycling; we will operate a comprehensive outreach programme to engage potential stakeholders to ensure the widest possible impact of our research; we will embed a centre for doctoral training in liquid metal engineering to train future leaders to deliver long-lasting benefits of closed-loop recycling.