By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, 30.09.2011 (Business Standard): Indian-born engineering professor, Veena Sahajwalla, whose research led to the commercialisation of a world-first “green steel” manufacturing process, has been honoured with the Nokia Innovation Award at the 2011 Telstra NSW Business Women’s Awards here today.
Sahajwalla, who is the Director at the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) at The University of New South Wales (UNSW), is helping the materials industries combat environmental challenges with technology that reduces carbon-emissions and uses recycled rubber tyres that would otherwise go to landfill in electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking.
Growing up in Mumbai, Sahajwalla didn’t think of anything as waste. “In India, we used and recycled just about everything.” Values ingrained at an early age have paid off. She has been developing an environmentally friendly process that uses recycled rubber tyres as a partial replacement to coal-based carbon for EAF steel making.