Veena Sahajwalla: Reviving Waste
In 2005, she received the Eureka Prize for Scientific Research. She also received the 2006 Environmental Technology Award from the Association of Iron & Steel Technology in the United States for her research into recycling waste plastics in steelmaking. She wonders out loud, if you could attach value to waste, why would you waste the waste?
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ABOUT Veena Sahajwalla
“Scientia Professor Veena Sahajwalla is the Director of Centre for Sustainable Materials Research & Technology at UNSW (SMaRT@UNSW) at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Her research interests throughout her career have been in sustainability of materials and processes with an emphasis on environmental and community benefits.
Through this interest, Veena has invented an environmentally friendly process of recycling plastics and rubber tyres in steelmaking. She has developed a new technique called polymer injection technology. Rubber partly replaces coke in electric arc furnaces, removing used tyres from our waste stream and cutting energy, costs and emissions associated with steelmaking.
Veena has already shown that waste plastics can be diverted from landfill dumps and used in this way. In Australia, OneSteel has licensed the technology from NewSouth Innovations, the commercialisation arm of the University of New Wales, and successfully trialled it at its Sydney and Melbourne plants.
The invention has the potential to divert 300,000 car tyres from landfill. The Australian company says it has made steelmaking cheaper and more efficient by slashing its power use by millions of kilowatts per year, and cutting its use of coking coal by between 12 and 16 percent.
The technology could massively cut power use and carbon emissions by the world’s 300 electric-arc furnace steelmaking plants, which account for 30 percent of crude-steel output globally. She is an international award winning scientist and engineer who has presented on her research and experiences throughout the world. Veena is also one of the judges on the ABC TV show, The New Inventors.”
The VIDEO
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Who do we know at New Zealand Steel?
Also, Auckland Council is allegedly looking at an overhaul of the waste management system with a leaning toward ‘zero waste’. Technologies of this type help to move this aspirational statement toward meaningful reality.
What connections do you have here Gail?
Hi Miles,
My personal friend Dr Jenny Buchan who teaches Business Law at UNSW told me about Prof Veena Sahajwalla who is in the Science Faculty at the same University in Sydney. I’d been looking for a technology that could do something with the mounting number of tyres that were ending up in my local rubbish tip.
I learnt that there was a local contractor who had a very expensive piece of machinery that was able to shred the tyres but then the shredded pieces were simply put into the landfill anyway. Veena’s break through technology was just what I’d been looking for.
I don’t know anyone in New Zealand Steel, do you? Could we find out? Also if the allegations that Auckland Council are serious about an overhaul of their Waste Management system then I suggest that you view this piece also in my site on ByFusion. It’s a world first. They’re located in Queenstown: http://www.penneylaneonline.com/2011/06/27/byfusion/
Cheers, Gail